On one hand, I never paid much mind to the differences between PC and Mac modifier keys. And for the most part, if you just s/control/super/g most things will feel at home.

On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that the remapping of my various keyboards ctrl/super/alt based on how Macs do things, will confound and give me headaches when movements become like super+arrow = home ; alt+arrow = move by word; rather than fn+arrow = home; ctrl+arrow = move by word ; etc.

And then there is the fact that the key map in my head is basically an XFree86 key mapping....lol.

Because for the most part, I have lived in the land that Unix and CP/M wrought. Thus whenever I use quick editing shortcuts that are universal to GUI apps, as opposed to inspired by vi and emacs, I am very, very, very quick to execute actions like shift ctrl+left+left to select the previous two words.

If I am found laying on the floor, twitching, it’s probably Google’s fault. If I’m found laying on the floor spinning in circles, it’s probably because my Bluetooth keyboards are shared between a PC, and an iPad, and third things that are like PCs.

Fun with tmux & dtach

Generally the problem with running a terminal multiplexer like tmux or screen on a remote server: is if the server goes down so does your session. Like wise an issue will eventually crop up where in you have to SSH into another server or even the box you're sitting in front of, if you don't want a seperate xterm in order to do it; thus losing all that multiplexer goodness.

Well, I pretty much run the session (tmux btw) on my system, and then use dtach for running things I may want to detach from—like a big compile. One perk of this is I get to have my "notes" window in tmux without double the latency.

Today, I was thinking about how can I link this notes window to various tmux sessions? It is possible to link windows (linkw) in a session and entire sessions (new -t {other session}) but that is not what I want. dtach again to the rescue! My notes script already amounts to opening my "Scratch" note file in vim, and changing the window name to "notes" if used in tmux. So I modified it to be smart enough to run vim in dtach, or reattach. Thusly, I can have tmux sessions by project, home, etc, and share the same vim session between them using dtach.

Note tacular!

A case for autotools that I have only recently begun to understand

Like just about anyone who has ever had to install software from source has, I have /used/ autotools before. But like many barely ever scratched the surface. Lately I have been cuddling up with the autotools from a developer perspective, a lot more. To the point perhaps, that I am liking autotools better than I ever thought I would. Like anyone whose used more than 1% of autotools, I know you can (or are supposed to when the developer did it right) be able to run configure/make outside the source tree. Also I know about --prefix and most of the usual configure script goodness. Now, it's far from the first time that I have mentioned it, but my "Holy Grail" of builds has long been a multi-tree build:  one tree for build files, one tree for distribution files, and trees for whatever source and data files are needed. Then because I may be doing a diverse set of platforms, this usually becomes a need to further grind down into having co-existing build/dist trees: for example to have FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, and Windows NT builds in the same working copy. Including using different toolsets, such as GCC 3.x, 4.x; and MSVC 9.0, 10.0 on the Windows NT builds. Now that my main computer is an ARM, processor architecture will probably end up mandatory. I like stuff like Build/platform/toolset. Hacks to keep this sort of thing working under {insert random OS here} should be kept to a minimum. How well a build system supports helping me with this problem (and file system hier) is one way that I judge build systems. Over the years, I have tried...just about everything except ant and maven but hey, how many C/C++ projects do you see using those at home? Multi-lingual stuff is always idea. At present, my favourite build system is premake4 -- it makes setting up such a build pretty painless. After that is probably Qt's qmake, since it makes compiling fairly painless. With the GNU build system, it is pretty easy to do something like:

    $ cd Build/Linux/ARMv7/gcc44
    $ ../../../../configure --prefix ../../../../Dist/Linux/ARMv7/gcc44
    $ make install

Which would give something well suited for testing, and there is a config file to save whatever configuration options I usualy test with in $prefix. The check and installcheck targets also do what I will typically do with a `make tests` or a `./tests.sh` in my own working copy. To top it off, autotools probably has one of the best tools for making a distribution: make distcheck. I do not need most of what autoconf can do, and usually prefer to skip it. The ability to have things fail at configure rather than compile time is handy. Being able to e.g. toggle between Deps/{pkg} and the systems {pkg} at configure time is great and something I already do with premake4. Automake can also pretty much do what you could get out of not having to hand write Makefiles. What REALLY shines however is libtool! We have all cursed at something or other involving autoconf, automake, or libtool. But the little secret is libtool is one of the best assets ever given to a developer. If you don't think so, you should try to alcomplish the same thing in SCONS for a solid week, just to support three platforms with differing toolsets, unless much as changed in a few years: the amount of kludges is a recipee to be pissed off. libtool can pretty much do it all and for a lot of platforms. The real question is how well autotools would really play with doing a Windows NT build with Visual C++. I've never tried that. That is also the principal reason I've never used autotools on most of my projects lol.

Interesting findings. At work, my work station has always had problems using SMB/CIFS, in fact  it is almost useless but fortunately being Linux-oriented over here in Engineering, more traditional unix methods are favoured, so it is of little loss. Now the sad fact that most people use Windows, means that SMB/CIFS is easier to work with under Android than stuff like NFS or any of the multitude of similar techniques. As I rarely need to share stuff with multiple people, for my own stuff, I typically use SSHFS.

In fact, SSH is both such a part of my work flow between machines (here and espiecally at home), I wrote a handy script that lets me quickly mount my $HOME on a remote as ~/hosts/{hostname} locally. It's useful. My workstation is setup both as a SSH client, server, and sshfs-mounter. But how to get stuff via Android, since I can't just use CifsManager?

My ASUS Transformer obviously has support for FUSE, just looking at what `mount` says is enough to guess that. But there is no real support for SSHFS, all the goodies are missing. Since I have a very simple chroot of Debian stable, a quick `apt-get install sshfs` and bingo, all done :-). Since the stuff I'm interested in mounting at home (where SMB/CIFS works like a charm), I can just use SSHFS mounts and a shared socket. I.e. I can have things like my Dropbox mounted, get live sync, and even access locally!

Muahauhauauhuahuaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a deplate of my Viki notes file on XRandR

1.1 Querying information



This was taken  with my ASUS 1015PE Netbook (Alice) hooked up to my LG
wide screen at home on 2011-07-23.

$ xrandr -q

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2944 x 1080, maximum 4096 x 4096

LVDS1 connected 1024x600+1920+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 220mm x 129mm

   1024x600       60.0*+

   800x600        60.3     56.2 

   640x480        59.9 

VGA1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 477mm x 268mm

   1920x1080      60.0*+

   1680x1050      60.0 

   1280x1024      75.0     60.0 

   1152x864       75.0 

   1024x768       75.1     60.0 

   800x600        75.0     60.3 

   640x480        75.0     60.0 

   720x400        70.1 

$

LVDS1 is Alice’s display. VGA1 is the monitor hooked up to the VGA
port on the side.

1.2 Positioning monitors

   
• xrandr –output M1 –left-of M2 :: M1 is left of M2
  
   
• xrandr –output M1 –right-of M2 :: M1 is right of M2
  
• xrandr –output M1 –above M2 :: M1 is above M2
  
• xrandr –output M1 –below M2 :: M1 is below M2
  
• xrandr –output M1 –same-as M2 :: M1 and M2 mirror each other.
  

Where M1 and M2 are the short names given from xrandr -q. I assume that

    $ xrandr --output M1 --left-of M2 --output M2 --right-of M1

Is permitted, +/- using two xrandr commands for it, as well as being
redundant.

1.3 Setting monitor resolutions

    $ xrandr --output NAME --mode SIZExSIZE

Sets the monitor NAME to the given mode.

1.4 Turning monitors on and off

1.4.1 On

    $ xrandr --output WHICH --mode 1024x768

1.4.2 Off

    $ xrandr --output WHICH --off

VNC over SSH, the idiots guide.

Since I rather like to have options, I've decided to augment my usual SSH /w option of X forwarding to the option of VNC as well.

Objective: connect to my netbooks X session using VNC, tunnelled over SSH.


Implementation:

Since my netbook runs a GNOME centric distribution, I'm using the "Remote Desktop" preferences program on "System -> Preferences". If you're like me and to damn lazy to hunt and peck, this just runs the program 'vino-preferences'. On here it's possible to setup VNC access to your desktop. In essence, it just runs vino when you login. There are loads of good and bad write ups on VNC server setup and 3 or 4 click setup is good enough for me.


My iptables rules pretty much block such things as incoming VNC requests, which is good because I don't want the session exposed across the network interface. Pretty much all there is for accessing my netbook is the SSH port.

Now on another system, it's possible to connect using SSH forwarding. This gains us both encryption for the VNC session and less port exposure; that is good for security.

PuTTY client setup:

1. Load/create your session in PuTTY
2. Go to SSH -> Tunnels
3. Add a port forwards
1. source port: 5900
2. destination: localhost:5900
4. Login to the system using PuTTY.

OpenSSH client setup:

1. ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 username@host

There are options for both if disabling the shell session and only running the forwarding is preferred (PuTTY: SSH->Don't start a command at all; OpenSSH -> RTFM for -n, -N, and -f). 5900 is the default VNC port running off the server end (my netbook).

Now on the client machine, connecting any VNC client (e.g. TightVNC) to localhost should give the desktop session over at user@host; in this case, my X session on alice!

This is the shortest, sweetest, non-non-sense, you're assumed to know how to RTFM if you want to know the facts, kind of write up that I've seen on doing this. Hmm, maybe it helps that I already know how to use SSH port forwarding with OpenSSH, hehehe.

This blog entry by Michael W. Lucas, has got to be one of the most impressive ways I've ever heard, for integrating OpenBSD in a hurry.

Today, I really got a nice little reward. Basically, the company I work for was getting people together to go over the renewals with our medical insurance provider, and of course, eh, I'd rather be at  my work station getting something done. So this provided me with the impetus to setup my phone as  an impromptu in-building terminal.

Problemo is, I usually use VIM. While I'm stubborn enough to give that a go on a small screen with a virtual keyboard, my phones virtual keyboard doesn't provide the *PC* keys: namely escape, control, and alt. It's also not the most convenient to use the programs methods of side stepping this. So I got to thinking for a moment, what is an editor that is light and small enough to use over a text terminal, yet powerful enough to service a programmer without a lot of special keys? --> I found the solution right in my own skills repertoire, or as some say: the default text editor! Some years back, I took the trouble to learn how to use /bin/ed out of an interest in learning how to use vi/vim better.

After a couple minutes of thinking on this, it occurred to me: ed was designed in an era when terminals were SLOW, so slow in fact, that you could probably piss off someone by trying to print to much to standard output, which could be connected to a roll of paper and a true TTY >_>.


So it seems that learning /bin/ed was well worth it, because it makes one hell of a file text editor when using your phone as a terminal :-)

I've been experimenting with window managers lately: fluxbox, openbox, awesome, and musca. Fluxbox and openbox, are pretty much just generic window managers, at least in my eyes. That said, they are well worth using, for most peopel. Awesome and Musca are tiling window managers, and a lot more, eh, minimalist. While I used to collect window managers, among quite a few other odds and ends back when I had time for it: but I have never done the "Tiling thing" beyond a very brief test drive of dwm.

Awesome and Musca create an interesting experience: you create the windows, the window manager, manages them. It's almost alien lol. Normally you create a window, the window manager figures out where to draw it. You do the rest, e.g. by resizing and moving it around as necessary. In these tiling window managers however, newly created windows are automatically arranged and sized by dividing containers.

Launching your first window is like maximising, lauching a second window causes everything to resize and give each program half the screen, and so on based on some tiling pattern. The most used seems to be 1 half sized window left and 2 quarter sized windows right; works better than you might think. Rather than resizing the windows individual, you resize the containers. So if the screen is laid out as:

|         | term |
| Firefox |------|
|         | chat |

>

Selecting either the term or chat window and attempting to resize will resize all three windows. Try to enlarge the chat window horizontally, and Firefox will shrink and term grow, horizontally. Try to shrink the term window vertically and the chat window grows vertically, and so on.


It's mind blowingly better than what the style of window management people are used to these days, which dates back to like Mac OS 2 or Mac OS 3 back in the '80s. It is also a little bit awkward to let the computer take care of something, that you've been doing by hand for almost twenty years!

Relishing the experience however, has made me think of something different. I was just experimenting with the MinOverlapPlacementPenalties and MinOverlapPercentPlacementPenalties settings in FVWM, and it hit me. What if you could dynamically define what windows are important? I.e. what screen space should have more "Don't cover this up unless necessary", and how big a frame (i.e. for auto-tiling) should be, and so on?


It is technically possible, if perhaps computationally 'interesting' to figure out at the machine level. The windows that spend the most time focused or are most often gaining the focus, would be prime candidates. If the user 'uses' the window more than others, give it a larger chunk of available space scaled to its idea of how much space it needs, then prefer minimising the percentage of those windows being covered over or shrunken to absorb other windows in the same screen space.


It is food for thought!

Since for (network) testing purposes I've rigged a spare partition on my desktop as a virtual duplicate of my laptop, but obviously s/ati/nv/ and Linux is smart enough to take care of the rest. To make the most of it, I also swapped a few things around to the latest packages. For dependency reasons Gnome is installed; like wise KDE for old times sake and Xfce for completeness. I decided that since I needed a desktop session to test the 'common' web browsers, that I may as well take KDE for a spin.

So far, I've tried about four or five versions of KDE since 4 went public, all but one of them was a release version. Taking a count from the moment the KDM wall paper is replaced by my blanked Xfce one, my meagre laptop loads Xfce into a usable state by "The count of three", and has Dropbox and some applets loaded by five seconds. By contrast, on my waaay more powerful desktop, not only did I give up counting at the second mark of the startup splash screen: I dropped my water bottle and had to fish around in the dark to retrieve it from under the table. By then, KDE still had not gotten half way through it's start up splash srcreen 8=). I like KDE, I've even used some versions of 3.4 on a piddly 500Mhz system once upon a time. But KDE 4 is just slow, freaking slow!

However, I must admit that KDE offers a very pleasant and polished visual appearance. Its like looking at a sleek sports car, only better. Their new desktop metaphor as it were, is likely a grand improvement over the traditional desktop. Compared to wrapping ones noodle around Deskmate or living with the UI that has plagued Windows for the last 15, if not 25 years, it is also argubly easier to use. No doubt about it, a first load of KDE is a hell of a lot more straight forward than a straight load of modern (or classic) Windows.

While it's all so well done now, and as much as I remember enjoying KDE(3), if KDE(4) is the way the future desktop will be, me thinks that I will be continuing to use a keyboard and terminal emulator more often than a mouse, keyboard, and GUI applications!

It's nice stuff, but hell, if it's going to be that slow, why even use more than an xterm?

Yipee-Kai-Yay Terminus font now avail. on Windows !

As some no, after spending a night of debugging only to learn that I had typed structobj,member instead of structojb.member, after a 6-8 hour coding run, I went in search of a new font. The font I found, was Terminus, and ever since I have _absolutely fucking loved it_ in fact, I can't even look at my terminal in another font without missing it.


When filing a bug report to the libmng folks, I left a comment in the bug entry about using a font where O != 0; then went in search of my dear terminus, and then found this and just had to install them :-D.


Terminus is my favourite font, but my only compliant has been needing X to actually enjoy it.... now that's solved!

My chuckle of the day, 2009-12-21

One notable feature of .fetchmailrc syntax is the use of optional noise keywords that are supported simply in order to make the specifications read a bit more like English. The ‘with’ keywords and single occurrence of ‘options’ in the example aren't actually necessary, but they help make the declarations easier to read at a glance.
The traditional term for this sort of thing is syntactic sugar; the maxim that goes with this is a famous quip that “syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon”.^[88] Indeed, syntactic sugar needs to be used sparingly lest it obscure more than help.

-- The Art of Unix Programming

one way to pass the time

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/

what can I say, I love studying the past lol.

Useful way to pass the time

Got bored, have never found something like xkill that I can just say, "xkill somewindowname". Found xwininfo last week, thought about this hehe:

#!/bin/sh
#
# kill X client by window name
#

if [ -n "$1" ]; then
    xwininfo -name "$1" | grep 'Window id:' | awk '{ print $4 }' | \
    head -n 1 | xargs xkill -id 
else
    echo "usage: `basename $0` windowname"
fi

xkillname xconsole and poof - the xconsole window is killed, hehe.

old joke

http://www.educ.umu.se/~bjorn/unix/wizard.html

Microsoft, innovative? Nah, really!

A new version of Windows Mobile, is supposed to have a Honeycomb like start menu.

But hey wait a minute, I remember a X window manger that has something like that. After a bit of a hunt, I found it: Unix Desktop Environment (UDE) born back in 2004 ^{[Wiki] [home] [screen]}.


It's been on my todo list for a couple years now, to try out UDE; but then again, writing my own window manager for fun, and splelunking blackbox have also been on my todo list for a few years lol. I'm sure no one working on Windows Mobile 6.5 has ever heard of UDE, but it is nice to see someone at Microsoft is willing to try something DIFFERENT, if not totally new....


So far, the most innovative thing I've seen come out of Microsoft is some of the new window operations/shortcuts I've heard about in Windows 7; my response to it being: Have you jackasses really taken over a decade to figure out how to do that, or did you finally realize that window mangement has evolved since 1987 ???

My laugh of the day....

Early Unix hackers struggled with this in many ways. In the languages of 1970 function calls were expensive, either because call semantics were complicated (PL/1. Algol) or because the compiler was optimizing for other things like fast inner loops at the expense of call time. Thus, code tended to be written in big lumps. Ken and several of the other early Unix developers knew modularity was a good idea, but they remembered PL/1 and were reluctant to write small functions lest performance go to hell.

Dennis Ritchie encouraged modularity by telling all and sundry that function calls were really, really cheap in C. Everybody started writing small functions and modularizing. Years later we found out that function calls were still expensive on the PDP-11, and VAX code was often spending 50% of its time in the CALLS instruction. Dennis had lied to us! But it was too late; we were all hooked...
-- Steve Johnson

Hmm, I've always wondered why some really old programms written in C look so odd, as if the person had never heard of a function call (or macro) before. I've never been able to figure out if it was because many function calls were more expensive on the hardware back then, because the programmer was used to assembly, or loyality to some "style of the day".


I guess that clears that up a bit more; if so, thank GOD he lied!

Laughings of the day:

                   T h e   V O G O N   N e w s   S e r v i c e  

VNS TECHNOLOGY WATCH:                           [Mike Taylor, VNS Correspondent]
=====================                           [Littleton, MA, USA            ]

COMPUTERWORLD 1 April

                     CREATORS ADMIT Unix, C HOAX

    In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson,
    Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating
    system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate April
    Fools prank kept alive for over 20 years.  Speaking at the recent
    UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following:

    "In 1969, AT&&T had just terminated their work with the 
    GE/Honeywell/AT&&T Multics project. Brian and I had just started 
    working with an early release of Pascal from Professor Nichlaus Wirth's ETH 
    labs in Switzerland and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and
    power. Dennis had just finished reading 'Bored of the Rings', a
    hilarious National Lampoon parody of the great Tolkien 'Lord of the
    Rings' trilogy. As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics
    environment and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating
    environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new system to be as
    complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users' frustration
    levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more
    risque allusions. Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped
    version of Pascal, called 'A'. When we found others were actually
    trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional
    cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C. We stopped
    when we got a clean compile on the following syntax:

    for(;P("\n"),R--;P("|"))for(e=C;e--;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2);

    To think that modern programmers would try to use a language that
    allowed such a statement was beyond our comprehension!  We actually
    thought of selling this to the Soviets to set their computer science
    progress back 20 or more years. Imagine our surprise when AT&&T and
    other US corporations actually began trying to use Unix and C!  It has
    taken them 20 years to develop enough expertise to generate even
    marginally useful applications using this 1960's technological parody,
    but we are impressed with the tenacity (if not common sense) of the
    general Unix and C programmer.  In any event, Brian, Dennis and I have
    been working exclusively in Pascal on the Apple Macintosh for the past
    few years and feel really guilty about the chaos, confusion and truly
    bad programming that have resulted from our silly prank so long ago."

    Major Unix and C vendors and customers, including AT&&T, Microsoft,
    Hewlett-Packard, GTE, NCR, and DEC have refused comment at this time. 
    Borland International, a leading vendor of Pascal and C tools,
    including the popular Turbo Pascal, Turbo C and Turbo C++, stated they
    had suspected this for a number of years and would continue to enhance
    their Pascal products and halt further efforts to develop C.  An IBM
    spokesman broke into uncontrolled laughter and had to postpone a
    hastily convened news conference concerning the fate of the RS-6000,
    merely stating 'VM will be available Real Soon Now'.  In a cryptic
    statement, Professor Wirth of the ETH institute and father of the
    Pascal, Modula 2 and Oberon structured languages, merely stated that P.
    T. Barnum was correct.

    In a related late-breaking story, usually reliable sources are stating
    that a similar confession may be forthcoming from William Gates
    concerning the MS-DOS and Windows operating environments.  And IBM
    spokesman have begun denying that the Virtual Machine (VM) product is
    an internal prank gone awry.
    {COMPUTERWORLD 1 April}
    {contributed by Bernard L. Hayes}

Remember how much fun you had upgrading your systems to VMS V5.0?
Well, you had it easy......

   THE VAXORCIST
   -------------

             A rough draft of a video presentation
                     by Christopher Russell
       Operations Manager, Dept of Mechanical Engineering
                     University of Maryland
   
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

(SCENE: Inside of a VAX computer room.  CREDITS ROLL as the SYSMGR is
sitting in front of the console terminal, typing.  He pauses, picks up a
small magnetic tape, walks over to a tape drive, mounts it, and returns to
the console where he continues typing.)

(There is a knock at the door.  SYSMGR walks to the door and opens it,
revealing USER.) 

USER:  Any idea when the system will be up?

SYSMGR:  Well, I just installed version 5.0 of VMS, so I'm going to run
some diagnostics on it overnight to make sure it works alright.  Assuming 
everything goes alright, the system should be up first thing tomorrow 
morning.

USER:  Great.  Thanks.  (Exits)

(SYSMGR closes the door and returns to the console.)

ROD SERLING-LIKE VOICE:  This is John Smith, University of Maryland System 
Manager.  In an effort to make his system the best it can be, he has just
installed VMS Version 5.0 onto his VAX.  But little does he know that the
Version 5 documentation kit from Digital includes a one-way ticket to ...
the VMS TWILIGHT ZONE!

(ominous music - fade out)

(Fade in.  The SYSMGR scans the console for a moment, then turns, picks up
his coat and walks to the door.  He stops at the door for a moment, looking
back at the big machine.  Finally, he turns out the light and exits,
closing the door behind him.) 

(Cut to the Console Terminal.  We read the following as it is printed on 
the console terminal:)

VMS V5.0 DIAGNOSTICS --

DIAGNOSTICS - PHASE 1 STARTING...

DIAGNOSTICS - PHASE 1 FINISHED SUCCESSFULLY.

DIAGNOSTICS - PHASE 2 STARTING...

TESTING MICROCODE ... SUCCESSFUL

TESTING DECNET ...  SUCCESSFUL

TESTING LICENSE MANAGEMENT UTILITY ... SUCCESSFUL

TESTING SYSTEM SERVICES ... SUCCESSFUL

TESTING HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL AND COMPLETELY UNDOCUMENTED AI ROUTINE ...

(Cut to view of the Tape in the Tape drive.  The tape spins for a moment, 
and suddenly stops.)

(Cut to view of the Machine Room.  A fog has begun drifting across the 
floor, and the hardware is slowly being backlit by a pulsing red light.
A peal of weird laughter cuts through the silence.  A variety of bizarre 
things occur:  A VT100 monitor sitting on a table slowly rotates 360
degrees; the tape drive opens and tape begins spewing out of it; slime
begins pouring out of a disk drive; the line printer begins form-feeding
like mad.  These continue for several minutes, or for as long as we can
keep them up.  FADE OUT) 

(SCENE: Hallway outside of the computer room.  SYSMGR walks up to the door 
and is met by USER.)

USER:  System going to be up soon?

SYSMGR:  (as he speaks, he tries to open the Machine room door, but the 
door is apparently stuck.) The diagnostics should be done by now, so we
should be up in about 15 minutes... (he succeeds in opening the door, but
is confronted by floor to ceiling magnetic tape.  Tangled at about eye
level is an empty tape reel. SYSMGR takes the reel and looks at it.  CLOSE
UP of the reel so we can read the label, which reads: VAX/VMS V5.0
DIAGNOSTIC KIT.) (to USER) ...give or take a few days.... 

(SCENE:  View of TSR (Telephone Support Rep) from behind as she is sitting 
in a cubicle, a terminal in front of her.  Beside her on the wall is a 
poster which reads "Digital Has It Now - But You Can't Have It".  We can
see the terminal, but we should not be able to read what is on it.  She is
wearing a headset.) 

TSR:  Colorado Customer Support.  What is your access number, please?

SYSMGR VOICE: 31576

TSR:  And your name?

SYSMGR VOICE:  John Smith.

(Cut to SYSMGR standing beside his console.  He his holding a phone to his 
head with his right hand, and holding a printout in his left which he is 
perusing while he talks on the phone.)

TSR VOICE:  And what operating system are you using?

SYSMGR:  VMS version 5.

TSR VOICE:  And is this a problem with the operating system or a layered 
product?

(As the SYSMGR looks up from the printout, his eyes suddenly widen and 
he drops the printout and ducks.  At that second, a disk platter flies 
through the air where his head just was.  Slowly, SYSMGR stands up and 
looks to where the disk went.  PAN BACK to reveal a stack of boxes with a 
disk embedded in one of them at neck height.)

SYSMGR:  (into the phone) Operating System.  Definitely the Operating System.

(Cut back to TSR sitting at her desk.)

TSR:  Can you describe the problem, please?

(SYSMGR voice can now only be heard as mumbling)

TSR:  Yes... Tape drive spewing tape into the air... yes...  Line printers 
printing backwards... yes... miscellaneous hardware flying through the
air... uh huh...  disk drives melting... yeah... strange voices coming from
the CPU board... I see... yes.  Is that all?  (pause as she finishes typing
at the terminal)  Well, I'm afraid that that team is busy at the moment,
can I have them get back to you? 

(CUT TO SCENE: MANAGER sitting behind a large desk in a plush office.  
DEVELOPER is pacing in front of him, hands behind his back.)

(SUBTITLE: Meanwhile at Maynard...)

MANAGER:  So tell me!  What the hell happened?!

DEVELOPER:  (turning to face MANAGER)  It's a glitch, a fluke.  A one in a 
billion chance.  And it's not Development's fault.  Not really.  

MANAGER:  Then who's fault is it?

DEVELOPER:  We traced it back to the Software Distribution Center.  It 
seems that there was a mixup and some of the code for the experimental AI 
routine was copied onto the distribution from the wrong optical disk.  (He 
removes a CD from his jacket)  This one, to be precise.

MANAGER:  And what's that?

DEVELOPER:  (reading the label)  "Ozzy Osbourne's Greatest Hits".  
Normally, it wouldn't have made any difference, as the AI routine isn't 
used yet.  But when they began running diagnostics, it hit the routine and 
the computer just sort of became a thing possessed.

MANAGER:  Wonderful.  Were any other distributions affected?

DEVELOPER:  No, just the University of Maryland's.

MANAGER:  Well, that's a relief.  We've got to get them taken care of
before anyone finds out.  Can you imagine what Digital Review would do 
if they heard about this?

DEVELOPER:  We could always blame it on the Chaos Computer Group.

MANAGER:  No, we've already used that one.  This calls for drastic action. 
(MANAGER picks up the phone and begins flipping through the rolodex)

DEVELOPER:  Who are you going to send?

(CUT to the Rolodex so that we can read the cards.  The first card reads:

 SYSTEM PROBLEMS - Ron Jankowski, x474

he flips to the next card:

 BAD SYSTEM PROBLEMS - Bob Candless, x937

he flips to the next card:

 REALLY BAD SYSTEM PROBLEMS - Michelle French, x365

he flips to the next card

 OUTRAGEOUSLY BAD SYSTEM PROBLEMS - Mike West, x887

he flips to the next card and taps the card with forefinger:

 SYSTEM FUCKED UP BEYOND ALL RECOGNITION - The VAXorcist, x666


(CUT to Machine Room.  SYSMGR is standing by the console holding 
an RA60 disk cover and using it as a shield to defend himself from various 
pieces of hardware which are flying at him from off-camera.  There is 
a knock at the door.  Slowly, SYSMGR makes his way to the door and opens 
it.  Standing there, backlit amidst outrageous amounts of fog is the 
VAXORCIST, wearing a trench coat and fedora, and carrying a briefcase.)

VAXORCIST:  (in a hushed voice)  DEC sent me.  I hear you're having some 
problems.

(CUT to SYSMGR OFFICE, a small but pleasant office with posters on the 
walls and clutter on the desk.  As the VAXORCIST enters, he removes his 
coat and hat, revealing a very techie outfit beneath.  He is wearing a DEC 
badge.)

SYSMGR:  (Frantic)  Problems?  Problems?!?  You could say I'm having some 
problems.  4.6 was fine.  4.7 was fine.  I install 5.0 and all Hell breaks 
loose.  The damn thing ate two of my operators this morning!

VAXORCIST:  Calm down, everything will be alright.  I've dealt with
situations like this before. 

SYSMGR:  You have?

VAXORCIST:  Four years ago at an installation in Oregon, a programmer
renamed his Star Trek program to VMB.EXE and copied it into the system
directory.  When the system was rebooted the next day it phasored the
entire accounting department claiming that they were Klingon spies.  There
was a similar problem in Texas three years ago, and then, of course, there
was the IRS fiasco that we're not allowed to talk about.  But don't worry. 
These things can be fixed.  Before I can help you, though, I have to ask
you a few questions. (The VAXorcist opens his briefcase and removes a
clipboard) Now, according to the report, the strange occurences began after
you installed VMS Version 5, is that correct? 

SYSMGR:  Yes, that's correct.

VAXORCIST:  Now, did you carefully read the Installation Guide for VMS
Version 5? 

SYSMGR:  (confused) Installation Guide?

VAXORCIST:  Yes, it should have come with the Release Notes.

SYSMGR:  (still confused) Release Notes? (SYSMGR begins rooting about on 
his disk, shifting papers around as if he might find them underneath)

VAXORCIST:  (annoyed) Yes, Release Notes.  They should have come with your 
documentation upgrade. 

SYSMGR:  (completely confused - looks up from his rooting through the 
papers on his desk) Documentation upgrade?

VAXORCIST:  (angry) YES!  The Documentation upgrade for your VMS
Documentation Set! 

SYSMGR:  Documentation S...?  Oh, you mean the grey binders?  They're over
there. (he points to the wall behind the VAXORCIST.  The VAXORCIST turns
and we see a closed glass-front bookcase packed with grey binders.  A small
red sign on the front of the bookcase reads: "IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK
GLASS"). 

VAXORCIST:  Right.  This is going to be tougher than I thought.  Let's go 
take a look at your system and see just how bad everything is.

(CUT to the Machine Room.  The room is neat and tidy and there is no sign 
that anything is wrong.  The VAXORCIST enters the room with the SYSMGR
behind him.)

VAXORCIST:  Everything looks okay to me.

SYSMGR:  Maybe it's hibernating.

VAXORCIST:  Unlikely.  It's probably trying to lure us into a false sense 
of security.

SYSMGR:  Sounds like VMS alright.  (VAXORCIST gives him a dirty look)

VAXORCIST:  I'm going to have to test it's power.  This could get ugly, you 
may want to leave.  (The SYSMGR shakes his head no.  The VAXORCIST brings 
hiself up to full height in front of the VAX and points a finger at it)
By the power of DEC, I expel thee from this system! (Clap of thunder)

(CUT to door to the machine room.  The SYSMGR is pulling a cart on which 
sits the VAXORCIST wrapped from head to toe in magnetic tape)

SYSMGR:  Any other bright ideas?

VAXORCIST:  Just shut up and get this damn stuff off of me.

(CUT to SYSMGRs office)

VAXORCIST:  (Writing on the clipboard)  Things look pretty bad.  I think 
we're going to need a full-scale VAXorcism here. 

SYSMGR:  Is there anything I can do to help?

VAXORCIST:  As a matter of fact, there is.  We've got to incapacitate the
VAX to keep it from causing any more damage until I'm ready to deal with
it.  Now, I've got some software here that will do that, but it's got to be 
installed.  (VAXORCIST hands SYSMGR a tape)  With that running, the CPU 
will be so bogged down, the VAX won't be able to harm anybody.

SYSMGR:  (Examining the tape) What is it?  A program to calculate pi to the
last digit? 

VAXORCIST:  Better than that.  It starts up All-in-1 with a 10 user load.

(CUT to Hall outside of Computer Room.  The VAXORCIST approaches the door.
As the SYSMGR approaches the door, the VAXORCIST holds him back.

VAXORCIST:  I appreciate your help, but it won't be safe for you in there.

SYSMGR:  What?  You're going in there to face that thing alone?  You're 
nuts!

VAXORCIST:  Hey, it's my job.  (VAXORCIST turns to the door)

SYSMGR:  Wait a minute.  (VAXORCIST stops and turns around)  You better
take this with you.  (SYSMGR removes a very large and very nasty looking 
gun from the inside of his jacket)

VAXORCIST:  (Smiling)  No, I won't need that.  I've got something more 
powerful.  (VAXORCIST holds up a small guide-sized orange binder, opens it, 
and shows it to SYSMGR.  CUT to closeup of the book which reads:  "GUIDE TO 
VAX/VMS SYSTEM EXORCISM")

(CUT to view of Machine room door as seen by the VAX.  The VAXORCIST enters 
the room and stands in front of the VAX.  CUT to view of the Machine Room 
showing the SYSMGR confronting the VAX)

VAXORCIST:  By the power of DEC, I command thee, Evil Spirit, to show 
thyself.

VAX:  Bugger off.

VAXORCIST:  (Shaken)  What?

VAX:  I said Bugger off!  Now get out of here before I core-dump all over 
you!

VAXORCIST:  (Recovered)  Threaten me not, oh Evil one!  For I speak with 
the power of DEC, and I command thee to show thyself!

(A rumble is heard and again the VAX becomes backlit by red lights and a 
fog begins to roll across the floor.  The VAX cabinet doors slowly creak 
open to reveal two small red lights in the dark cabinet which appear to be 
the creature's eyes)

VAX:  There.  Happy?  Now get out of here before I drop a tape drive on 
your private parts.

VAXORCIST:  (Opening the orange binder, he begins intoning SHUTDOWN.COM in 
gregorian chant.  The VAX screams.)

VAX:  Stop that!  Stop that!  You, you DOS LOVER!  Your mother manages RSX
systems in Hell! 

(The VAXORCIST continues and the VAX screams again.)

VAX:  Stop it!  (a large wad of computer tape is thrown at the VAXORCIST, 
apparently from the VAX).  Eat oxide, bit-bucket breath!

(The VAXORCIST continues and the VAX screams once more.)

VAX:  Mount me!  Mount me!

VAXORCIST:  (finishing the intonation) And now, by the power of DEC, I
banish thee back to the null-space from which you came!  (The VAX screams
and the scream fades to silence.) 

(CUT to the doorway of the Machine room, which now stands open.  The 
VAXORCIST is once again wearing his trench coat and fedora.)

SYSMGR:  So it's over?

VAXORCIST: (Putting his hat on) Yes, it's over.

SYSMGR:  (Shaking the VAXORCISTs hand) Thank God.  Listen, thanks a lot.  I
don't know what we would have done without you. 

VAXORCIST:  Hey, it's the least we could do.  The Software Distribution 
Center should be sending you a patch tape in a week or two to patch out 
that AI routine and prevent this from happening again.  Sign here.  (he 
hands SYSMGR the clipboard, SYSMGR signs at the bottom and hands it back)
Have a good one.  (VAXORCIST leaves). 

(SYSMGR enters the machine room.  Camera follows him in.)

SYSMGR:  (Calling to someone off-camera)  Okay, you guys, let's get 
rolling.  Get those backup tapes out.  We've got a clean system again!
(cheers are heard from off-camera.  The SYSMGR leaves the picture, leaving 
only the VAX with it's cabinet doors still open in the picture.  Slow zoom 
in to the LSI unit.  Slowly, the LSI unit begins to emit a pulsing red 
glow)

(Fade to black.  CREDITS ROLL)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (C) 1991 by Christopher Russell (crussell@eng.umd.edu).  Please 
feel free to copy this and pass it around if it amuses you, as long as 
this notice is left intact.  

Any similarity between characters appearing in this script and any persons, 
creatures, or entities living, dead, or otherwise is purely coincidental.  

I am no longer an employee of the University of Maryland, so I'm not 
particularly bothered if you think that they are responsible for any of 
this.  Unless it's funny, then it's mine.  

Thanks to my friends and colleagues at the University of Maryland and
elsewhere for their help and encouragement in the developement of the
script and the video.

--
Edited by Brad Templeton.  MAIL your jokes (jokes ONLY) to funny@looking.ON.CA

Please!  No copyrighted stuff.  Also no "mouse balls," dyslexic agnostics,
Iraqi driver's ed, Administratium, strings in bar or bell-ringer jokes.

Now if only it was Windows Vista freezing at midnight instead of peoples Zunes, I would be roflmfao'ing so hard, I'd bust a gut and need to be hospitalized to stop laughing xxxxDDDDDD.

When writing up a post on DF, in reply to JMJ_coders recent thread, some of my mental-checks lead me Google for one of the user groups, leading me to an old document; which helped spurk my interest in unix. As I normally do, finished writing the post, and started floating around various cross links.


Noticed a few additions to the Rootless Root since I last parsed it. One that really caught my eye,

Master Foo and the MCSE

Once, a famous Windows system administrator came to Master Foo and asked him for instruction: “I have heard that you are a powerful Unix wizard. Let us trade secrets, that we may both gain thereby.”

Master Foo said: “It is good that you seek wisdom. But in the Way of Unix, there are no secrets.”

The administrator looked puzzled at this. “But it is said that you are a great Unix guru who knows all the innermost mysteries. As do I in Windows; I am an MCSE, and I have many other certifications of knowledge not common in the world. I know even the most obscure registry entries by heart. I can tell you everything about the Windows API, yes, even secrets those of Redmond have half-forgotten. What is the arcane lore that gives you your power?”

Master Foo said: “I have none. Nothing is hidden, nothing is revealed.”

Growing angry, the administrator said “Very well, if you hold no secrets, then tell me: what do I have to know to become as powerful in the Unix way as you?”

Master Foo said: “A man who mistakes secrets for knowledge is like a man who, seeking light, hugs a candle so closely that he smothers it and burns his hand.”

Upon hearing this, the administrator was enlightened.

Although I have little love for most of the Microsoft products I've tried over the years; it's worth noting that the people I've met with the higher certs from MS, generally know their domain very well.

I can't believe I am reduced to this...

I finally decided to try something I've never bothered with before: X over SSH. Despite it's pro's and con's, I actually do like the X Windows System for the most part, but rarely have time to go spelunking through X.Org.



I installed XMing on my Windows machine (sal1600), booted my laptop (dixie), and ran some tests using Xming.exe / PuTTY.exe - highly successful, and quiet a look on my face, when I saw gVim on FreeBSD, pop up on Windows XP!


Connection link is as follows:

WRT54G Router/Access Point  ->|
                              |  <- WPA Personal /w AES algorithm
dixie   -> ~54Mbps 802.11g  ->|
sal1600 -> ~54Mbps 802.11g  ->|

Personally, I would prefer Gigabit Ethernet connection and some good cat-6 cable, then drop the router for something a bit more direct... but I can't lol.


dixie runs FreeBSD 7-STABLE; sal1600 runs Windows XP MCE (SP3).


A few quick batch files to make calling XMing easier then kicking XLaunch into 'just what I want':

==> xming-1win.bat <==
@echo off
cd /d P:\Network\Remote\Xming

start /B .\Xming.exe -clipboard -keyhook -lesspointer -unixkill -nowinkill -screen 0 1280x800@1 -swcursor

==> xming-multiwin.bat <==
@echo off
cd /d P:\Network\Remote\Xming

start /B .\Xming.exe -clipboard -keyhook -lesspointer -unixkill -nowinkill -swcursor -multiwindow

For SSH, I copied my setup in PuTTY for Dixie; enabling Compression and X tunneling, and bingo -> X11 over SSH. Launch Xming, run PuTTY -load Dixie-X11, and bingo! For the same of speed, I also changed PuTTY to using a faster encryption algorithm then what I normally use for a shell. Adding more fonts is quite a necessity, but rather limiting if you don't like 12px fonts. I can't help but wonder, if Xming would work with fonts installed on X.Org; only two ways I know to find out; grep X or test it. Note to self: double check memory of how X Servers handles fonts, against the documentation (it's been awhile). IMHO running X this way is a liability, even over SSH, and a WLAN even worse. But it is quite nice to see, even under this kind of equipment, it's actually quite usable. I so need a replacement keyboard for my laptop!!!