...making Linux just a little more fun!

## The Linux Launderette

### Contents:

Gentoo quote
Teenage sex and the Linux desktop
Pirates
MS's Virtual Wifi
Yahoo putting public domain books on the 'net
Haiku
Amusing but true
Open Source doesn't mean "steal me!" (SONY)
News today
Australian ISPs tapped to kill zombies
'Unix beats Windows' - says Microsoft!
'Inspirational' Linux posters
Penguins
Years of hard-work.
More William
Universal binaries
LADY READ ME PLEASE

### The Overflow:

Work In Progress
Australians in America
"End Of"

### Gentoo quote

Mon, 31 Oct 2005

From Sluggo

> 'In the spirit of "having a package before upstream releases it", Donnie Berkholz wrote: "The first release candidate [modular X 7.0 RC 1] was announced roughly 12 hours ago. And fitting the Gentoo you know as up to the minute, so far beyond the bleeding edge that it's wearing a Band-Aid before it starts to bleed, comes the complete package in Portage -- all 296 packages worth."' http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20051031-newsletter.xml

> (Now, if only it hadn't taken them a year to make Python 2.4 stable, months after 2.3 was disrecommended upstream.)

### Teenage sex and the Linux desktop

Thu, 03 Nov 2005

From Jimmy O'Regan

> No, I didn't know the two were related either, but RedHat's CEO recently said: "The desktop has become a lot like teenage sex: a lot of people are talking about it but not many people are doing it" ( http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/10/27/redhat_customer_control)

> Novell's Nat Friedman responded with graphs of teenage sex statistics (http://www.nat.org/2005/november/#Teen-Sex-and-the-Linux-Desktop) and says: "These graphs report that by age 19, 69% of American males and 77% of American females have had sexual intercourse. In fact, by age 17, about half of all teenagers have taken a ride on the wild elmo.

> So, I don't know if Matthew has teenaged children or not, but if he does, I hope he's paying more attention to his Linux teams!"

### Pirates

Sun, 06 Nov 2005

From Mike Orr

> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002606783_pirates06.html Luxury ship attacked by pirates

### MS's Virtual Wifi

Tue, 18 Oct 2005

From Jimmy O'Regan

> Slashdot has a story about a Microsoft Research project ( http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/05/10/18/0353217.shtml?tid=193&tid=185) Virtual Wifi (switches wifi addresses on the fly so you can join multiple access points simultaneously): http://research.microsoft.com/netres/projects/virtualwifi

> The comments mention a Linux equivalent:
>   http://www.wilibox.com/index.php?id=wili

> (IIRC, Linux has been able to do something similar with Ethernet cards for years).

### Yahoo putting public domain books on the 'net

Tue, 04 Oct 2005

From Jimmy O'Regan

> http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2005-10-03-yahoo-book-project_x.htm "Internet search giant Yahoo responded Monday to rival Google's plans to make books available for reading online by introducing its own version.

> The key difference: Yahoo is not scanning copyrighted works, as Google did before publishers called foul and it temporarily stopped. Instead, Yahoo is paying for the scanning of older, out of print titles and making them searchable through the Yahoo index and a new website at opencontentalliance.org."

> Userfriendly has the best take (http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051004): 'Funny. I've never heard "Project Gutenberg" called "Yahoo" before'.

> [Sluggo] Funny, I never heard IRC called "Yahoo Messenger" until a few years ago.

### Haiku

Mon, 07 Nov 2005

From Jimmy O'Regan

> Over at http://www.oblovmoka.com/code/haiku/haiku there's a Python script that 'discovers "Found Haiku"' in text files.

> (See also http://www.oblovmoka.com/code/haiku.php3)

### Amusing but true

Sun, 30 Oct 2005

From Benjamin A. Okopnik

> So, I've shipped the HP laptop off to be repaired; however, just before doing so, I wanted to try something that I saw on the Net while looking up anything I could find related to this problem. Someone had mentioned that having APM set in the Wind0ws registry could create all sorts of mysterious crapology, and that getting rid of those settings was a Good Thing. I booted Wind0ws - probably about the fifth time I did so on this machine since I started playing with it, searched the registry for the "APM" string (nope, no such thing), and got ready to shut it down before shipping it out when I spotted THIS:

> > http://okopnik.freeshell.org/img/WinXP_POS.jpg

> (Note message in lower left corner)

> I was rather amused, but also somewhat curious: was this a virus, or what? Searching the Net for that exact string produced zero results (!), so my best guess is that some disgruntled employee at HP is doing his bit for entropy - and given HP's response, I suspect that I'm the first one to report this.

> Yes, I was nice enough to notify HP. However, the support-droid that I spoke to did not appear to take me seriously... their loss. Pay the people who are your main interface to the public $5/hour, and you'll get those who are worth about half of that - if that much. On their own heads be it.

> [Jimmy] Nah, it's either a tweak to the resources section of 'logonui.exe':

>     STRINGTABLE
>     LANGUAGE LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_ENGLISH_US
>     {
>     1,      "arial"
>     2,      "tahoma"
>     3,      "tahoma"
>     6,      "Type your password"
>     7,      "welcome"
>     8,      "Please type your password again.  \nBe sure to use the correct
>     uppercase and lowercase letters."
>     9,      "You can click the \"?\" button to see your password hint.\n\nPlease
>     type your password again.  \nBe sure to use the correct uppercase and
>     lowercase letters."
>     10,     "Did you forget your password?"
>     11,     "Turn off XP piece of shit"
>     12,     "Turn off %s"
>     13,     "Password Hint:"
>     14,     "Undock computer"
>     15,     "Logged on"
>     }

Interesting. Is that within the executable itself, or is there a related conffile somewhere?

> [Jimmy] It's in the executable. PE executables have an extra 'resource' section (an imitation of the resource forks on the Mac) that contains things like icons, menus, dialogue layouts[1], and, in this case, string tables (used for i18n in Windows).

> These items are put into a .rc file (the thing I quoted), which is then compiled into a binary .res file, which is put into the resource section by the linker. (I used a program called "Resource Hacker" to get a decompiled version).

> [Jimmy] or someone named the computer "XP piece of shit", which seems more likely to me.

> Say, Ben, what did you name it?

As I recall, I took the defaults whenever I could; I'm pretty certain that I didn't name it anything like that.

> [Jimmy] I looked at my own PC -- it was a string table change.

> [1] There's a program out there that'll read a Win32 .exe and output some C files that implement a similar interface in Gtk+, for example.

### Open Source doesn't mean "steal me!" (SONY)

Fri, 18 Nov 2005

From Kat Tanaka

> Naughty, naughty SONY. Compounding their rootkit gaffe, this news:

> > http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39154379,00.htm

> "Controversial copy-protection code used by music publisher Sony BMG on CDs appears to have tapped an open-source project, raising questions about copyright, software experts said on Friday."

> "The XCP program will installs itself on Windows-operated personal computers when consumers want to play 49 title CDs from Sony BMG. The program forces consumers to use a music player that comes with the program.

> "This music player contains components from an open-source project, an MP3 player called Lame, it has emerged."

> Oh, SONY. Big corporation stealing from (the) Lame. Tsk!

> [Jason] I wouldn't say controversial. I'd say just plain stupid: http://jcreigh.blogspot.com/2005/11/untrusted-computing.html

### News today

Sun, 04 Dec 2005

From Sluggo

> http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,387470,00.html Hooters comes to Germany St Pauli Girl, watch out

### Australian ISPs tapped to kill zombies

Sun, 13 Nov 2005

From Benjamin A. Okopnik

> Forwarded from a ping by a friend:

> > http://news.com.com/Australian+ISPs+tapped+to+kill+zombies/2100-7348_3-5938170.html?tag=html.alert also available at http://tinyurl.com/b2qsm .

### 'Unix beats Windows' - says Microsoft!

Fri, 11 Nov 2005

From Jimmy O'Regan

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/index.php?p=459

"What's noteworthy about it is that Microsoft compared Singularity [MS Research's new kernel] to FreeBSD and Linux as well as Windows/XP - and almost every result shows Windows losing to the two Unix variants."

> [Sluggo] I wonder how long it will be before Microsoft releases an OS that is at least Unix compatible at the API and user-command level. That would solve the biggest hassle of MS systems, that they use completely different commands to do the same thing, and one doesn't want to spend a year learning stuff that is valid for only one OS and could change at any time. Apple drank the kool-aid, so maybe MS will eventually too. Even just having `fork()` would halve the difficulty of porting programs.

Well... their "Services for Unix" (I think) package provides a Cygwin-like environment. It's a free download, but doesn't come with the OS because quite a few of the packages are under the GPL.

> [Ben] Apple decided to bank on what they know - their hardware and their UI design ability. They were never in the OS competition anyway, since you couldn't run their OS on anything other than their hardware.

> Micr0s0ft can't, short of committing suicide, do anything broadly Unix-compatible with their OS, because the automatic next question from the users would be "then what the hell are we paying you money for?" If their entire user base was familiar with Unix commands and practices, they'd be out of business in a week.

### 'Inspirational' Linux posters

Tue, 22 Nov 2005

From Jimmy O'Regan

http://www.arouse.net/despair-linux

> [Jay] The purple one's gay.

The Debian one? Yeah, it sucks.

> [Jay] Applying Ashworth's Law to that domain proves interesting, as well.

Ashworth's Law? `/me` googles

http://baylink.pitas.com/20000226.html: "If the page someone pointed to is interesting, there's almost certainly something even more interesting somewhere else on the site"

Hmm... Oh. Porn, and Jesus. Interesting combination: makes me wonder if there are Catholic sites that give penances with the porn... "Lesbian schoolgirls and cheerleaders in the locker room! Order now for just $29.95 and 3 decades of the Rosary".

### Penguins

Tue, 15 Nov 2005

From Mike Orr

> http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,13369,1642792,00.html

> My life as a penguin

> "As far as they're concerned, this is beach weather, and the penguins are out doing what they do best: standing around in a big huddle looking in the same direction, in this particular case at me."

> Read the rest of the article. It's interesting. Really.

### Years of hard-work.

Thu, 1 Dec 2005

From Thomas Adam

Well, it seems I have been doing a lot of hard work:

> http://www.linuxgazette.com/user/129

> [Rick] That's from the magazine whose front page brought us "Golden Triangle,Golden Traingle Tours,Golden Triangle Travel,Golden Triangle Travel Agents,Golden Triangle Tour Operators".

> [Martin] I'm presuming thats the old site..? If you go to the front page It looks like someone has blogspammed them too...

> [Ben] I have to stop laughing before I choke.

> The latest from SSC's front page:

>     --------------------------------------------------------
>     Linux Gazette Experiences Site Breaking Traffic

>     December 08, 2004 -- SSC Publishing, publisher of Linux Gazette,
>     announces site record-breaking traffic. This November, Linux Gazette
>     received 1,340,000 page views. The Gazette has been published since 1995
>     and has experienced steady growth ever since.

>     webmaster - Wed, 2004-12-08 13:06.
>     --------------------------------------------------------

> Per Kat: "It's not just spooge; it's Spooge-a-saurus Rex!"

> [Jimmy] OK, I'll bite: what does spooge mean?

> [Kat] In the Lexicon of Kat --

>     UCE : spam
>     commentspam : spooge

> More in line with the "traditional" meaning, I'd say spooge is "the endproduct of wanking".

> [Jimmy] Three Hail Marys and an Our Father? Oh...

> [Jimmy] Makes me regret saying "I'll bite"...

> [Kat] Or you could go with what folks at Urban Dictionary say: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spooge

> [Jimmy] Oh brilliant: "population paste". I must remember to use that in conversation (which should be easy, as I work in a factory).

### More William

Sat, 26 Nov 2005

From Jimmy O'Regan

> Rick mentioned the "Just William" books before (talking about "Good Omens"): Project Gutenberg posted "More William" this week, complete with illustrations.

> http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/1/2/17125/17125-h/17125-h.htm

### Universal binaries

Mon, 21 Nov 2005

From Jimmy O'Regan

> Funny citation from Universal Binary Programming Guidelines, 2nd edition (taken out of context):

> > Here are the most typical behavior problems you'll observe when your application runs natively on an Intel-based Macintosh computer:
> > 1. The application crashes.

> Pavel's diary: Education day - universal binaries
>   http://blog.janik.cz/archives/2005-11-16T22_47_07.html

### LADY READ ME PLEASE

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19.27.50

From MAURIZIO PAOLI

> Hi

> This is a legitimate appeal for ladies only. If you are interested or if you want to unsuscribe email me at pal555@mail.win.it

> I'm an Italian guy,I live in Italy and my name is Maurizio.I live in Roma. I'm sending this message to the people because I'm bored to live in Italy,I'm looking for a lady what could invite me in usa.I seek a millionaires american lady who desires a young guy for marriage.

> I would love to find a wealthy lady who lives in one of the following places in usa or nearby: 1) "The treasure coast",I mean north east Broward County or east Palm Beach county(FLORIDA) 2)Honolulu (Hawaii) 3)Reno(Nevada) 4)Las Vegas(nevada) 5)Atlanta(georgia) 6)Jupiter,Stuart,Coral Springs,Jensen Beach,Boynton Beach,Deepwater,Hutchinson Island or Miami(Florida)

> Considering that I like the mature women, I'd love to find a lady of 45-60yo age range. I'd love to find a gentle long haired lady who lives in a swimming pool house near the sea (as I like to swim) . I seek a lady without young or old children,a no smoker lady who could be widowed,separated,single ,divorced. I would need a sugarmamma figure at the beginning .

> I seek a bisexual woman that figures out of the years,looks young and feels young : it's not a problem if she's not beautiful because she should be beautiful inside and most of all ,she should desire a younger soulmate.(She could be overweight too) The thing I desire is to fix a serious stable relationship with a lady who gives me the opportunity to have a better life.

> ABOUT ME:

> > I have long black hair,my weight is 65 kilos(145 lbs) and my height is about 1.80 metres(5.11)... I'm no smoker `/drinker` and I'm good looking.

> If you could be the kind of woman I'm looking for, write me soon please!!!!!!

> Thank you very much for reading my letter . I think there must be a woman for me out there.

> Cheers

> `MAURIZIO PAOLI -Italy`

> [Jason] Words fail me. They really do. I can't find the sales pitch elsewhere in the message. So, he's either serious, or he's spamming for fun. Strange.

> [Jimmy] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_fraud#Online_Dating_Fraud

Released under the Open Publication license

Published in Issue 122 of Linux Gazette, January 2006