Posted on by lhl

DEFCON X is going on right now. Unfortunately, because of lamers, the forums are down. Hmmm:

At DC 9 we grew the coverage of the wireless network to cover most of the Alexis Park. We operate an 802.11b wireless network with a gateway to the net. It is a wide open network with no WEP security, assigning addresses by a DHCP server. Yes, people mess with the DHCP server, but all in all it works well.

NEW for this year: DEF CON will continue to grow the network, as well as provide some dedicated servers for attendees to use. For example we will have a web/ftp server set up where people can upload pictures they have taken in order to share them with the rest of the con attendees. DEF CON will also have a limited amount of 802.11a access points for Really high speed access. While all this great bandwidth is limited by our net connection, it will be great for people on the local network to swap pictures and data.

Me personally, I would be way too terrified to have my wi-fi turned on at DEFCON. But that’s just me.

Posted on by lhl

I was searching around the Trillian site for some compact skins and found a good one called Microscopic. What sets it apart is that while it’s very small, you can also set the options so you can view avatar icons. That’s good. Also, there’s a little customization utility which will make setting up the skin easier. While I was looking around, I also found nikebball87’s skins. I remember Dervish from years back when I was using that skin on ICQ. Currently, I’m using his port of the Geek skin.

One thing that’s interesting is that both Microscopic and Geek both have alternate contact list modes (Trillian Bar as it’s known apparently). I had no idea this existed and had to do a search. You can switch to it on the skins that support it via Preferences, in the Contact List panel at the bottom. I’m not sure how useful it is (although w/ it rolled up, you can keep it on top of everything), but it sure is nifty.

Posted on by lhl

Arggh. This is probably my current biggest annoyance with Mozilla as a user – the mail client always brings down my entire browser. Worse yet, Total Recall isn’t useful because it doesn’t remember tabs. Therefore I lose everything I’m browsing whenever some malformed foreign-language spam rolls in. Would it be that hard to simply allow multiple instances of Mozilla?

Posted on by lhl

Heh, TouristofDeath.com has a Rate my Domokun page. I don’t know why, but I find this one just to be completely hilarious. Must be the Bert is Evil nostalgia or something.

fluffy grue has a k5 diary entry that traces through the backstory behind some of the in-jokes, but he misses one of them. Although more obvious in say, this image, the other images are also play on the jesus images (in addition to the domo, Sex Kitten and goatse.cx)

Posted on by lhl

Starved for Food, Zimbabwe Rejects U.S. Biotech Corn – on the face of it, this seems like a problem with genetic engineering, intellectual property, greedy corporations and the whole blah blah, but digging a bit deeper, things seem slightly more complex. The Zimbabwe “president” Robert Mugabe, a one time freedom fighter (and apparently formerly well respected guy), has reportedly been using famine as a tactic to incite unrest (having already crippling Zimbabwe’s agricultural industry—Zimbabwe was once the region’s breadbasket).

Some numbers from a recent Economist article, From breadbasket to basket case:

In all, 95% of commercial farmland has been slated for “redistribution”. Some 60% of commercial farmers must halt work immediately. Another 35% have only received preliminary notices of confiscation, and so may carry on farming for a while longer. The remaining handful have so far escaped, either through the incompetence of their persecutors or because they have friends in government.

…

Mr Mugabe says that his “fast-track land reform” will redistribute wealth from rich whites to poor blacks, from whose families the land was stolen in colonial times. At a recent conference in Rome, he called the programme “a firm launching pad for our fight against poverty and food insecurity”. But since the land is usually handed out to ruling-party loyalists, rather than skilled farmers, the result so far has been the opposite. Cereal production in Zimbabwe has fallen by 67% since 1999-2000, according to the WFP, and looks set to tumble further.

Mr Mugabe does not seem to care. After stealing a presidential election in March, his chief concern has been to punish those who dared to support his opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai.

… And starving peasants who are suspected of having voted for him are denied food aid in areas where the ruling party controls its distribution.

Posted on by lhl

Mike Mignola has drawn up a Hellboy movie teaser poster of Ron Perlman as Hellboy. It’s cool as all get out and 2004 of these are being handed out today at the San Diego Comic-Con. I would so be there, except for you know, this whole work thing. The poster image is currently up online at hellboy.com. The last thing I need is more bits of junk in my apartment, so maybe it’s all for the best. I also managed to resist the “Super Summer Sale” last weekend at Golden Apple. (20-90% off everything and gazillions of 10 cent comics—last sale I spent over thirty bucks, getting almost the whole run of sandman mystery theater, and the books of magic. Those are all sitting stacked in the corner of one of my closets right now.)