patchbay

a patchbay might seem a bit like ye olde telephone switchboard but can actually do some neat things. here's some cablemonkey stuff:

the thing looks like this:

basically, this box contains 2 rows of 24 TRS sockets each, on front and back, equalling 96 ways to sink your beloved cables.

there are some terms that are sometimes used differently: normalled, half-normalled, open, paralleled, split and isolated. local copy: show

notice that one will hardly ever find a serious use case for the "open" configuration. connections might be different in equipment, ymmv.

each top and bottom socket on it would be on a little PCB, with one of the sockets in gray and the rest in black. it can also be rotated and put back into the patchbay.

 in theory,

these connections can be plugged in with whatever.

in else,

very often an approach is taken that looks like

the top sockets are outputs like from a subgroup, fx, line or soundcard out,
the bottom ones are inputs like for a microphone or other sound sources.


whenever a plug is inserted into the gray socket, top and bottom row will be isolated.

the idea is to use the back side of the patch- or mixbay to connect the default connections. other setups can flexibly be patched, and just unplugging the front cables will reset the connections to default.

insert cables

can be connected to the back and left disconnected at the front until some fx needs plugging in or directly used as input.

fossil, a dscm

fossil is an open source distributed version control system with some features like

• distributed bug tracking
• distributed wiki
• web interface
• and moar

like a detailed overview cares to explain.

most annoying feature ever!

as with the increasing version number of the ffox less and less plugins do work, all ffox
DNS cleaning extensions didn't install with my recent version 9.something

so, here comes the plain way to do it:

• about:config
• yes, I'll be careful
• new -> integer
• network.dnsCacheExpiration as name and 0 as value
• new -> integer
• network.dnsCacheEntries as name and 0 as integer value

*phew

apropos: did you know about:robots?

try it, LOL :_)

recent findings

streaming & radio tools

• butt (linux, win, mac; with gui) - http://butt.sourceforge.net/
  
• airtime (studio solution, looks like based on liquidsoap) -
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/airtime/ & http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/
  
• robinet, another very fresh tool utilising liquidsoap: http://robinet-lq.sourceforge.net/
• radiomate, yeah, more liquidsoap http://radiomate.org

Assuming:

• you have running prosody.im XMPP server
• you have the telnet module enabled
• you added modules and/or changed configs
• you don't want to restart the service and force-disconnect the connected users

Here is what you do:

telnet localhost 5582

now we want to load a module

module:load("muc_log", "conference.example.com")

| Loaded for conference.example.com
| OK: Module loaded onto 1 host

if loaded first time just do

module:load("muc_log_http")

more trickier, when you need to clean up for a module reload

httpserver.new.http_servers[5290].handlers["muc_log"] = nil

now browser to http://conference.example.com:5290/muc_log/ (trailing slash needed!)

now: profit!

ardrum

Recently i started making my own drumset. as good e-drums are not quite affordable to me, i set out to build my own with some design goals:

• the individual drums should be sensitive to the place where they get hit
  
• i wanted the set to be able to play samples as well as to trigger and influence sound synthesis
  
• it should teach me about arduinos and other microcontrollers
  
• the sensor input should be processed in an arduino and sent to pure data
  
• it should be sort of affordable
  
• standard parts should be used whenever possible
  

i came back from work where we checked my 20 yr old piezos with an oscilloscope, they have their first peak between 8.88 and 9ms after being hit. less than 10ms latency should work. among the other drums, these piezos go into the snare, too.

parts

electronics

• arduino atmega 168
  
• plenty of piezos (i still had them and have no idea what kind they are)
  
• an analog multiplexer to expand the amount of analog arduino inputs
  
• a bunch of ethernet cables to hook the things up

hid

practice cymbals, pads and other materials

• some toms
  
• a snare
  
• da bass kick
  
• le hihat
  
• cymbals: rubber crash, grass ride et le cow
  

software

when its in a releaseable shape, consists of
- arduino sketch
- pure data patches

and of course, schematics too.

noisefoc

yesterday we built a noisefoc, a little NAND-based square wave synthesizer.

the sounds it makes can be heard in a little video

putty and ssh public key authentication

hardly ever did i bother to use putty as a normal terminal usually does what i want. unfortunately, there is an "operating system" whose name i will not mention that considers itself so different that the variety of available terminals for it is pretty low.

needing to tunnel an audio stream, i finally engaged in the quest for working ssh public key authentication using putty on such a system. needless to say, i read Chapter 8: Using public keys for SSH authentication and Chapter 9: Using Pageant for authentication of its documentation.

also needless to say, i couldn't have imagined how many pitfalls it contains. on unix, generating a key pair and sending the public key over is something that does not take more than a minute.

putty saved the generated keys somewhere, with the private key named .ppk and the public named whatever. it also offers to export something into openssh format which was what i wanted. i was nevertheless amazed that this file only contains the private key.

the public key that is needed to be put into server:.ssh/authorized_keys looked like some other rsa key that are used for ssl certificates but not very much like the keys that are normally stored in .ssh/authorized_keys. there is something that will output this format that i found on unix but not yet on other platforms, -O public-openssh.

remedy:

edit a copy of this public key file with a text editor, delete all the boilerplate stuff, write ssh-rsa / ssh-dsa on the beginning of the line with the actual key, join all further lines of it to just one, append something like user@host at the end and delete all the rest. the file is now ready to be appended to the other keys in authorized_keys.

the documentation on puttygen on unix has options to directly output this format using -O public-openssh . in this case i did it manually, from this:

---- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----
Comment: "rsa-key-20110410"
AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAIEAqW/3hc9LgrNfYHFdBU37AM45s0OLfDJ1isvh
V5Ug4h0d/YzY8uzjRcZU5FrUz3NAsLlkgZck7M3Dg61/6oSZRDYAOZwsWJWhv+bx
uBY6Y2JEiFTZP1vIJoaj2v3nJz07w5n6ZtueCtodUWLi8MHotC6+zsXEmCbhI1RR
7u/8ork=
---- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----

into this:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAIEAqW/3hc9LgrNfYHFdBU37AM45s0OLfDJ1isvhV5Ug4h0d/YzY8uzjRcZU5FrUz3NAsLlkgZck7M3Dg61/6oSZRDYAOZwsWJWhv+bxuBY6Y2JEiFTZP1vIJoaj2v3nJz07w5n6ZtueCtodUWLi8MHotC6+zsXEmCbhI1RR7u/8ork= user@host

run:

start pageant. it will hang out in the system tray and private keys can be read into it and being decrypted at which point it workedforme(tm).

assuming you have a local git branch called my_diaspora with custom settings and changes (skins, header, footer etc) and serve that via e.g. nginx to from localhost:3000 to the outer world.

git checkout master
git pull
git checkout my_diaspora
git pull origin master
bundle install (you will probably be asked for a sudo or root password)
rake spec

if neccessary:

rake db:migrate && rake spec 

finally fire it up:

./script/server

now: profit!

hm, on multiple request, here is the nginx conf I use for diaspora:

server {
    listen 443;
    ssl on;
    ssl_certificate /path/to/my/cert.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /path/to/my/cert.key;

    server_name diaspora.subsignal.org;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/nginx.access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/nginx.error.log;

    root /path/to/my/diaspora/checkout/diaspora/public;

    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_redirect off;

    location / {
            client_max_body_size 4M;
            client_body_buffer_size 128K;
            if (-f $request_filename/index.html) {
                    rewrite (.*) $1/index.html break;
            }
            if (-f $request_filename.html) {
                    rewrite (.*) $1.html break;
            }
            if (!-f $request_filename) {
                    proxy_pass http://diaspora;
                    break;
            }
    }
    error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
            location = /50x.html {
            root html;
    }

}

upstream diaspora {
    server 127.0.0.1:3000;
}

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name diaspora.subsignal.org;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/nginx.access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/nginx.error.log;
    root /path/to/my/diaspora/checkout/diaspora/public;
    rewrite      ^(.*) https://diaspora.subsignal.org$1 permanent;
}

ok, but now profit!

As the previous post with bridged Xen setup was not good to make the LoadBalance IP running,
I again fiddled with routed setup and the things I learned from my friend TH. And, against
all the warnings in propably older OVH docs I just use now dev ethX as default gw in my
routing table(s). (I think before they introduced the virtual MAC they always blocked unknown
MACs (and therefore also random ones from virtualisation as well) on their switches. This
seems not to be the case anymore).

first, get two of your 3 failover IPs and attach them to your rootserver.

second, get at least a second rootserver and attach a LoadBalancing infrastructure to both
of them and then enable only your test candidate for now.

get your Xen in routed mode (xend-config.sxp):

(network-script network-route)
(vif-script     vif-route)

don't forget to restart xend!

and in domU /etc/network/interfaces easy as this: (where 2.2.2.254) is the default gw of your dom0)

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# fixed IP
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
    address 1.1.1.1
    netmask 255.255.255.255
    broadcast 1.1.1.1
    post-up /sbin/ip route add 2.2.2.2 dev eth0
    post-up /sbin/ip route add default dev eth0
    post-down /sbin/ip route del 2.2.2.2 dev eth0
    post-down /sbin/ip route del default dev eth0

# moving failover IP
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
    address 1.1.1.2
    netmask 255.255.255.255
    broadcast 1.1.1.2
    post-up /sbin/ip rule  add from 1.1.1.2 lookup 100
    post-up /sbin/ip route add 2.2.2.2 dev eth1 table 100
    post-up /sbin/ip route add default dev eth1 table 100
    post-down /sbin/ip rule  del from 1.1.1.2 lookup 100
    post-down /sbin/ip route del 2.2.2.2 dev eth1 table 100
    post-down /sbin/ip route del default dev eth1 table 100

# moving loadbalance IP
auto eth2
iface eth2 inet static
    address 1.1.1.3
    netmask 255.255.255.255
    broadcast 1.1.1.3
    post-up /sbin/ip rule add from 1.1.1.3 lookup 200
    post-up /sbin/ip route add 2.2.2.2 dev eth2 table 200
    post-up /sbin/ip route add default dev eth2 table 200
    post-down /sbin/ip rule  del from 1.1.1.3 lookup 200
    post-down /sbin/ip route del 2.2.2.2 dev eth2 table 200
    post-down /sbin/ip route del default dev eth2 table 200

now: profit!

Getting new sh*t around the block, having new roots at OVH, cool offers, nice machines, decent services, okay price, worst UI for management webinterface ever :_)

first, get two of your 3 failover IPs and attach them to your rootserver.

to get xen bridged running you need to create virtual mac addresses in the ovh manager. assign those to the vif section of the domU config:

vif         = [ 'ip=1.3.3.7,mac=02:00:00:00:00:01,vifname=vif.serv01',
                'ip=1.3.3.8,mac=02:00:00:00:00:02,vifname=vif.serv02' ]

use in xend-config.sxp

(network-script 'network-bridge antispoof=yes')
(vif-script vif-bridge)

and in domU /etc/network/interfaces easy as this:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
    address 1.3.3.7
    netmask 255.255.255.255
    broadcast 1.3.3.7
    post-up /sbin/ip route add default dev eth0

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
    address 1.3.3.8
    netmask 255.255.255.255
    broadcast 1.3.3.8
    post-up /sbin/ip rule add from 1.3.3.8 lookup 100
    post-up /sbin/ip route add default dev eth1 table 100

Using a binduser with password to read from LDAP/AD is common. Using the memberOf=Group attribute for authing is common, too. Both in combination can be a major fuckup: when your binduser is seeing the whole LDAP tree, except the memberOf attributes. Ok, rewrite your authing. Ok, do that once, twice, more often .. for every single service changing ootb auth to something non common. No no no, I don't buy that.

Well, I searched for ages, but the I found a vague hint, that enabling

"Pre Windows 2000 Compatibility" 

might help. An really, this info is digged up from the bottoms of the interwebbs. Golden needle in a haystack!

Enable the darn stopid named checkbox, and hey, finally you binduser can read what you binduser should be able to read anyways.

screwing over a fucked bootloader

problem:

 u got grub, lilo or something in your partitions but the shit doesnt boot

solution:

 fuck the harddisks MBR over to get a bootmenu that boots any fuckin partition, regardless of whats inside

how-to-repeat:

DISCLAIMER: if you wipe your harddisk(s) trying this its your dogdamn own fault.
also, dos partition labels only. no idea if this works on gpt.

NOTE: this snippet was almost finished but got fucked up on the way. it prolly sounded nicer before.

entering:

some FreeBSD bootmedium (ie. a freesbie image if that works for you or maybe something more recent: a CD, Stick etc)

boot the thing and get root.

make your mind up about which disk you want to replace the MBR of.
if there is just one disk in the box, and this is a PATA disk connected as master on the first bus, the bios will likely call it 0x80 (0x81 for the 2nd etc.).
also, in this case the os will likely call it ad0.

knowing the disks name in terms of bios and OS numbering will help in hitting the right disk.

making the mbr writable:

  sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=0x10

write a new mbr without affecting the partitions on it:

  boot0cfg -B -v -d 0x80 ad0

if everything went well, on next reboot you'll be greeted with a little chooser for booting.

I was wondering if my downspeed was so little, but after switching debian mirrors
I really wondered. Well, to make it clear, the limitation was not on my side, seems
somewhere server side. so to cirumevent that and have reasonable download speed,
just pipe the downloads to wget and do them parallely :d

cd /var/cache/apt/archives/ 
apt-get -y --print-uris install $x | egrep -o -e "http://[^\']+" | xargs -l3 -P5 wget -nv
apt-get -y install $x

works as well with dist-upgrade!

always need this one, as one forgets to ez'ly:

grub-install --recheck --root-directory=/mnt/debinst /dev/sda

world domination is close!!eleven

apparently there is no #~$ python setup.py uninstall
so, one has to workaround this.

first "reinstall" and record:

python setup.py install --record files.txt

last just delete the foo:

cat files.txt | xargs rm -rf

wget http://dl.opticaldelusion.org/sbf_flash
chmod +x sbf_flash
./sbf_flash filename.sbf

Thats it! FTW. LOL ..

Well, a bit --verbose look here [1] and here [2].

[1] http://www.nodch.de/howto-sbf-files-unter-linux-flashen/2204 (German)
[2] http://blog.opticaldelusion.org/2010/05/sbfflash.html

now, profit!

just to remind me later :_)

duplicity restore \
--scp-command 'scp -o IdentityFile=/home/phaidros/.ssh/id_rsa_duplicity' \ 
--sftp-command 'sftp -o IdentityFile=/home/phaidros/.ssh/id_rsa_duplicity' \
--file-to-restore path/to/folder scp://user@host.mybackup.de/path/to/backup/ \
localfolderforrestoredfiles

now, profit!

:_)

medical bookmarks

Side Effects Resource SIDER

Toxnet

Hazmap

Folksemantic toxicology network

Toxicslink: chemicals and health

Medipedia

pulseaudio and oss_emu in ubuntu maverick and maybe natty

i just stumbled across this: ubuntu removed the oss emulation from the maverick kernel without a working alternative.

hell, why would i care ? v4l and some applications that depend on it come to mind. also, the Brooktree 87x chipsets will not be working as they should.

to put this straight: i am using linux since the early 90ies, and a couple of years ago, when esoteric stuff like tun/tap devices and so on became part of the stock kernels of debian and ubuntu, i was very happy not having to build my own kernels anymore.

unfortunately, some versions ago, ubuntu decided to go for pulseaudio. while this might be good for normal users that do not want any other audio system, as all they use is an audio/video player and its plugins for a browser, it has not been a nice experience for people wanting ie. jack or some other low latency audio system. adapting pulseaudio to just care for a musicplayer and browser and going out of the way was almost impossible back then. nowadays, a handful of lines for asound.conf might fix it.

nevertheless, the easy way was to just dpkg --purge pulseaudio from the system and be done with it.

the question remaining is: how will i be able to do video installations with this ? i guess the easy way might be using debian instead, this will hopefully take longer until things break.

fabric,

a tool with a similar purpose like chef, but instead of running on rails this is python that can run in a virtualenv.

its focus is mostly on remote scripting in python. this includes shell access and more over ssh.

Installation like on the Fabric Website, some template data from the Fabric Wiki, recipes and use_cases.

examples: fabrics own fabfile

example usage:
"could you let a script run that checks for free space, and maybe delete some logfiles on all production servers, please ?"

Log Bomb

A recommended read on this: Tools of the Modern Python Hacker: Virtualenv, Fabric and Pip, IPython and virtualenv and Fabricate Your Way to Better Deployment

we waited ages for that ..

but now the xen-tools are back to Ubuntu Linux via Launchpad PPA!
See here: https://launchpad.net/~xtaran/+archive/xen-tools/

or better:

apt-add-repository ppa:xtaran/xen-tools

now, profit!

:_)

stumbling over the little ones ..

well, lenny as xen dom0 is nice and handy but lacks recent kernels, as in:
supporting newer OSs, like ubuntu > karmic.

so, when updating from hardy to lucid on the subsignal.org webservers I
ran into the problem of a boot always falling back into the root prompt,
because of some

mountall:mountall.c:2938: Assertion failed in main: udev_monitor = 
udev_monitor_new_from_netlink (udev, “udev”)
init: mountall main process (721) killed by ABRT signal

so, logically one follows the path to the future and migrates to pygrub. besides the obvious symlink

/usr/bin/pygrub -> /usr/lib/xen-3.2-1/bin/pygrub

then, get a kernel:

# aptitude install linux-image-virtual

and edit the menu.lst:

# nano /boot/grub/menu.lst 

default         0
timeout         5
title           webfoo, aka wiki.openwrt.org :)
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-server root=/dev/xvda2 ro splash
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-server 
boot

but there is still one other real strange occurance of entropy and misunderstandings
between me and murphy here:

bootloader = "/usr/bin/pygrub"
memory      = '1536'
vcpu        = 4

root        = '/dev/xvda2 ro'
disk        = [
            'phy:/dev/space/webfoo-disk,xvda2,w',
            'phy:/dev/space/webfoo-swap,xvda1,w'
              ]

name        = 'webfoo'
vif         = [ 'ip=xx.xx.xx.xx' ]

on_poweroff = 'destroy'
on_reboot   = 'restart'
on_crash    = 'restart'

vcpus       = '2'
extra       = 'console=hvc0 xencons=tty1 clocksource=jiffies'

before I found the mistake, the two lines for the disks where in
different order, first xvda1 then xvda2 .. logically pygrub runs
for the first device .. which then was the swap .. d'oh.
so, see the your partition with kernel and grub on is the first one
listed in domU.cfg!

hth

life can be so easy ...

phaidros@daddl:~/workspace/openrd/openrd.git$ sudo aptitude install uboot-mkimage
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  uboot-mkimage 
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 5 not upgraded.
Need to get 9,876B of archives. After unpacking 57.3kB will be used.
Get:1 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main uboot-mkimage 0.4build1 [9,876B]
Fetched 9,876B in 0s (61.7kB/s)      
Selecting previously deselected package uboot-mkimage.
(Reading database ... 52121 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking uboot-mkimage (from .../uboot-mkimage_0.4build1_i386.deb) ...
Setting up uboot-mkimage (0.4build1) ...

phaidros@daddl:~/workspace/openrd/openrd.git$ make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=/home/phaidros/workspace/openrd/arm-2010q1/bin/arm-none-linux-gnueabi- uImage
  CHK     include/linux/version.h
  CHK     include/generated/utsrelease.h
make[1]: `include/generated/mach-types.h' is up to date.
  CALL    scripts/checksyscalls.sh
  CHK     include/generated/compile.h
  Kernel: arch/arm/boot/Image is ready
  SHIPPED arch/arm/boot/compressed/lib1funcs.S
  AS      arch/arm/boot/compressed/lib1funcs.o
  LD      arch/arm/boot/compressed/vmlinux
  OBJCOPY arch/arm/boot/zImage
  Kernel: arch/arm/boot/zImage is ready
  UIMAGE  arch/arm/boot/uImage
Image Name:   Linux-2.6.33-rc8-00099-gb4cb3f9
Created:      Wed Aug 25 17:42:47 2010
Image Type:   ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
Data Size:    2561572 Bytes = 2501.54 kB = 2.44 MB
Load Address: 0x00008000
Entry Point:  0x00008000
  Image arch/arm/boot/uImage is ready

yippieh, not longer complaining about missing mkimage .. thanks ubuntu (though possibly it came directly from Debian, so thanks to you uys as well !!! )

yay. finally I managed to mangle my OpenRD Client board .. sigh

I had troubles, that the marge of my dev board was never stating the correct
manufacturer ID for the NAND, which made flashing newer Uboot bootloader im-
possible.

This was the error popping up whatever I tried with Uboot/OpenOCD ...

unknown NAND device found, manufacturer id: 0x00 device id: 0x00
probing failed for NAND flash device

It drove me nuts until found a solution [1]. Yay!

Now with a newer Uboot (v3.4.19) I was suddenly able to install Debian on the
SD/MMC. For that I followed the great Howto under [2].

Heh, nice. So it finally boots Debian .. and having the D-I via serial console
in my screen (hint: screen tops minicom a million times: screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200)
just feels very nice

But then I got hot and wanted moar .. MUAHAHA !! .. I finally have put the Debian
install from the SD/MMC onto the internal flash, but not before converting that
flash to UBIFS, following this guide [3] ff.

Heh, so now I have an OpenRD Client, booting Debian on choice from SD/MMC or the
internal flash with either kernel 2.6.32-5-kirkwood from Debian or the Sheevakernel
from [4] with 2.6.35.3 ..

I love it!

Further down I have a list with more good-to-read-in-case-links.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/openrd/issues/detail?id=7
[2] http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/openrd/install.html
[3] http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Installing_Debian_To_Flash#Convert_internal_flash_root_partition_to_UBIFS
[4] http://sheeva.with-linux.com/sheeva

• Create your own Debian image directly on SD/MMC:
  http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Creating_a_Debian_Image

• The complete docs for putting Debian onto flash (it is for Sheeva, so
  refer to the OpenRD specifics to link no. [1] and [2])
  http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Installing_Debian_To_Flash

• If things fail while flashing Uboot on OpenRD and such, get help with OpenOCD here:
  http://www.plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Setting_Up_OpenOCD_Under_Linux

• I had some trouble booting from flash/UBIFS, this link here clearifies alot:
  http://www.newit.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=135.0

• Building a custom kernel:
  http://computingplugs.com/index.php/Building_a_custom_kernel

hth

Ever wondered why it currently seems so fashionable for hackers to bash on homeopathy ?

well, we got ... numberz ! and to be less boring, put them into some pictures that give a relation.

First of all, lets see for what kinds of people homeopathy actually works and for whom not:

average effectiveness

strange, heh ?

well, theres moar: as demonstrated, it is easy to understand that people only choose the data that is sufficient to prove their claims. in the current homeopathy bashing, most arguments go on about the theoretical possiblility of any effect based on the amount of thinning of a given substance. Calculations involving the amount of molecules in the universe will quite often state that the effective thinning will be in a range that exceeds it.

as paracelsus stated that success alone will tell, this gives quite a different picture:

use only datasets that fit into your mindset

hm... so, really, if someone believes something is completely harmless, then why hit on it ? the winner is quite clear:

who has an advantage

100%

a clear winner at 100 per cent, not mentioning the small fry companies and users that are hurt by it.

To deviate a bit, an analysis of the hacker mindset in relation to alternative medicine seems in order.

As everyone is a computer expert these days, it should be mentioned that most computer people can maintain an overview over complex matter.
It should however also be mentioned that it mostly only applies to their own field of interest and proficiency and horribly fails at other systems.

hackers

Does that mean if they cannot maintain a feeling for a complex system outside of their domain it will equally be impossible to still take them seriously ?

It is about time for some lowkicks.

We shall take a look at their self image and how it deviates from reality.

Taking into account that they have access to a lot of information on the interwebs, this might suggest an onmisciencent belief system coupled with some more illusions:

omniscient beliefs

reality shows a different picture, one of delusion.

This leads us to the difference between life and its skewed image in the mirror of the web:

delusions

For people who are strictly to adhere to the dogma of duality expressed in ones and zeroes, anything fuzzy is an unlikely encounter:

a straight mindset

But what the heck anyway, would you rather get an operation by a computer-illiterate surgeon or a hacker believing he/she knows about medicine ? How often have hackers helped you medically ?

What if conventional medicine fails ? If alternative medicine were totally non-effective, how could it hurt trying an alternative ?

fact is that there is a significant amount of so-called hopeless cases that were solved by "ineffective and unscientific" means.

doh.

To be able to spot a hunch of an explanation, we need to leave the rational battlefield and enter martial arts. This view allows us to pinpoint a fundamental difference between hackers and medics from any field.

The Difference

This clearly gives an indication that a certain energy level needed to administer and receive alternative medical treatment is lacking at our aforementioned subjects.

Life is not a game where Experience Points can be gained by sitting in front of a screen and clicking at the things that pass by.

On the contrary, using computers for several times a day leads to a deprivation in energy that cannot adequately be quenched by pizza:

computers suck

To increase the amount of MediPacks (ie. Health), it makes sense to turn the box off once in a while and stop bitching about stuff one does not have a clue about.

Hugh.

for ages, i had my ssh-agent settings in my .bashrc. with lucid this setup stopped working.

i had to - tell gconftool to not intermingle:

gconftool-2 --set -t bool /apps/gnome-keyring/daemon-components/ssh false

    # ssh-agent stuff
    # broken with ubuntu lucid
    distro=lsb_release -c | sed -e 's/Codename://g' | grep lucid
    if [ ! -z "$distro" ] ; then
                #echo "$distro detected, aborting ssh-agent logic"
                echo $- | grep i > /dev/null
                noninteractive=$?
                if [ "$noninteractive" == 0 ] ; then
                    ssh-add -l >& /dev/null
                    if test $? = 2; then
                         if test -f ~/.agent; then
                                 . ~/.agent
                         fi
                         ssh-add -l >& /dev/null
                         if test $? = 2; then
                                 ssh-agent > ~/.agent
                                 . ~/.agent > /dev/null
                         fi
                    fi
                fi


fi