Sometimes they jump out at you...

"You can disagree with me about Iraq all you want, but you gotta admit I got some big ones. Even Condi here thinks so."

From the We Couldn't Get This Lucky Department...

Well, I think this makes sense in a weird way...

Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA-Executives at Google, the rapidly growing online-search company that promises to "organize the world's information," announced Monday the latest step in their expansion effort: a far-reaching plan to destroy all the information it is unable to index.

BBspot - Internet to Observe National Holidays

BBspot - Internet to Observe National Holidays

Further Not Getting The Point Admissions

This yokel is yet another inductee. Farenheight 451, a book about a future where books are banned and burned, is protested for having dirty language in it. Quote: "If they can't find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn't have a book at all." Exactly the sentiments of the government burning books in Farenheight 451.

Duh.

Further Idiocy, Re: Disturbed Covers Land Of Confusion By Genesis

What the heck is this stuff? Well, I can only surmise some people have played way too much Monopoly, watched way too much History Channel, and gotten way too high on some serious drugs.

Yup, common folks are victims of some pasty white cigar smoking guys behind a lot of murderous mutant soldiers bringing war and death on the people. Little girls who look like Dora the Explorer are being urged to strap bombs on themselves by strange beardy guys. And when the revolution comes, there will be more murderous violence by the supposed downtrodden and in the end it will all be about money.

Does anyone else remember the war of San Ysidro when the US Empire opened fire on milling starving Californians, leaving a bloody mess of Jordache jeans and Birkenstock sandals? No? Me neither.

I hear Dora is nicely unexploded as well.

Handicapped Safety in Meriden

This was an impulse shoot as I left Meriden City Hall. In a city that hassles homeowners for minor infractions regarding the conditions of their houses and yards, especially poor neighborhoods like mine, I thought this was priceless. South side of Meriden City Hall, improperly installed, and completely defective current state. Put full adult weight down on this laterally as one might do in a fall, and it will go down. Note the improper Sonotube® usage. First, they are too small and guaranteed to crack with any appreciable lateral force. They should have been eight to ten inch size instead. Second, the posts must be properly centered for maximum strength. These are basics known to anyone who has ever installed a new mailbox post. How did this construction crew miss it? More to the point, how did this pass inspection? Welcome to the dystopia.

My take on... D&D Online Stormreach

This is very preliminary so I'll make it quick.

After my first evening of the 7 day free trial my verdict is: VERY GOOD, KEEP IT UP!

It was very quick to register, my cable modem got a workout downloading the 1.7 GIGABYTES of data to start, and then I waited another half hour for it to update after installation on first run. Thereafter, smooth, no crashes, pretty straightforward.

Single biggest problem: movement controls. I HATE those mouse+keyboard systems ala Doom and always have. That will never change. The ubiquitous nature of twin joystick gamepads is something they needed to take into account for a first person/third person ghost run around game like this. Why is it that the only game making proper use of a gamepad on a PC that I've yet tried is Rayman 3? One stick to control camera, another to move, several buttons to control and fire and jump. This game cries out for gamepad compatibility. I'll have to try creating a Logitech profile for this game.

As I said, VERY GOOD. I intend to buy the full game by the end of the trial. Seems worth it for the sheer amount of things to do. There's literally a quest around every corner.

My take on... Neverwinter Nights

I picked this up after seeing it on the shelves at a mall store. I'd recently gotten into playing games again when they were to be found at Best Buy for $2.99 to $5.99. Demon Stone, Silent Hill 4, so on. Not too shabby. One of the games was Baldur's Gate II, Shadows of Amn with Throne of Bhaal and I liked them a lot. They were somewhat complex to the uninitiated but I got used to them. I beat Demon Stone in two nights of after work play by the way. I highly recommend it.

Anyhow, I decided to try out Neverwinter Nights after seeing a blurb in Baldur's Gate II that you could import characters from there to Neverwinter Nights. Well, they did plan it at the time. Didn't turn out that way. They figured that since the initial module reset your character to level 1 and no inventory, why bother? Still, it would have been nice for the modules that didn't reset it. They didn't consider it at the time.

So I bought the Diamond edition and eagerly tore into it.

Whoa. Nice game. Magic weapons easily gotten, good armor, decently matched enemies and a storyline not too insulting to my intelligence.

So I beat the first adventure, finishing at level 16. Played into some of the others like Hordes of the Underdark and then went on to Infinite Dungeons and have since downloaded and installed the newest one. Go check it out for yourself, I won't tell you anything, not even the name. Two words though: rideable horses.

If you want more, just search out the site hosting tons of player made modules. I personally recommend Dances With Rogues, a really well done ADULT module centered on a female player character.

Yeah, it's short, so sue me. I never said this would be a big write-up, just my take. That take is: BUY NEVERWINTER NIGHTS. PREPARE FOR NEVERWINTER NIGHTS 2 COMING AT THE END OF THIS MONTH.

A couple things that caught my attention...

Jack Thomspon still sucks. Like this wasn't a no-brainer. One wonders when someone will come up with a game where the target is to assassinate the most ambulance chasing lawers with a stunning likeness of Jack included. Thompson you moron, Pac Man was considered GAMBLING in my home town and by local ordinance they banned arcade game playing by those under eighteen. So we rode our bikes from our (somewhat) nice suburb into the nearby nasty drug and gang infested city to play instead. Did I turn into a gambler? No. Did I become a monster for all the blowing up and shooting things during decades of playing? Did I become a murderer because I play AD&D? Or a Satan worshipper? Self-righteous fuckers never understand and only help spread the idea that we aren't responsible for ourselves whatsoever and need someone to think for us. No thanks, I can think for myself.

Smokers less well treated than other parents? Yup. I grew up with a father, stepmother, stepfather, and sister who all smoked cigarettes. I smoke pipes and cigars. Did they cause this? Fuck no. Anti-smokers encouraged me. If there's anything I hate, it's being told by totally obvious hypocrites what to do and what not to do in a patronizing "you're too stupid to think for yourself" way. Tell me porn is wrong? Well, I'm downloading that bisexual orgy video. Drinking is wrong? I'm cracking a 40 my man. Tell me I can't smoke? I'll puff in your face. If they wanted to convince me not to smoke, self righteous assholeness was not the way. Come to think of it, that's one of the big turnoffs I see in the environmental movement. Not surprising that they and the left in general are so well liked by people who can't wait to wallow in hypocrisy themselves like youthful twits who dress in black and whine and moan all day about the lack of niceness in the world, but treat other people with discourtesy and rudeness at the mall. Not me. When I saw some anti-semitic claptrap the other day, I immediately thanked G-d I married into a Jewish family. Tomorrow, I think I'll spend lunch smoking and revving my gas guzzling SUV's engine while farting methane. After that, I'll go home and eat a 2/3 pound burger and burn some leaves and inhale the smoke. Fuck off you self-righteous twats.

Global Warming Caused By Man?

According to this Yahoo news article, we are now nearing the warmest point we've seen in one million years. Of course, Earth HAS been warmer, much warmer over its FOUR BILLION plus year history. Not just during the hellish earlier phases either. Are CO2 levels being caused by man? Going by the venerated Vostok ice cores, used as and when convenient by the chicken little global warming brigades, I'd say not. Check it out for yourself. Note the graph on this Wiki page.

Note the regularity of the graph? Did mankind somehow send CO2 back in time to cause previous spikes? Or could Earth simply have a regular cycle of CO2 buildup, washout, and rebuild? Oh no, we can't consider that. We are the supreme creatures of the universe and all that happens must somehow be caused by us. Look for continued attempts to find a link between mankind and the SE Asian tsunami, Mt. St. Helens, and extragalactic supernovae for that matter.

EDIT: This just in! Whoa, when did we, mankind, cause this one? Did we send nuclear waste to the sun? Did the Enterprise make a booboo? Oh, that was TV. Right. Nevertheless, look for blame to be laid on the avaricious west and straight white Christian male hegemony. Save the sun!

Today's Long Lost Post

The Alliance for Sweden wins the Swedish general elections. This sounds better than the Alliance for Fresno winning, so... good job. Well done.

In another dramatic turn of events, the Pope recently referred to a more than six hundred year old interfaith religious discourse which trotted out the FOURTEENTH CENTURY idea that Islam was a violent faith. Taken aback, aghast, and otherwise flustered, Muslims around the world gave the response that this was not true. They were a religion of peace, and if the mention by the Pope wasn't taken back, throats would be slit, Rome and the Vatican would be destroyed, and all infidels would drown in a sea of their own blood. We of the Unified Effort for Equal and Identical Fighting Against Conformity welcome them to the Not Getting the Point Club. They join our other major religious member, the born again Christians seeking to stop killing at abortion clinics using firebombs to kill everyone at the abortion clinic.

In the area of music, tastes and brain power continue to lessen. Not content with allowing Metallica to obliterate all of what little artistic credibility there was in Bob Seger's original version of Turn the Page, which included a fleeting shot of Ginger Lynn Allen shoving the business end of a dildo up her nether regions, the music world now gives us Disturbed covering Genesis. You may begin your betting pools on when Alien Ant Farm will cover Eye in the Sky.

Let this be a lesson. Quiet ignorance of Murray Head is not a solution to that damn song and if we'd only been a little less negligent, maybe this could have been avoided.

In closing, I wish to put in my two cents on the old question, What is America's favorite pasttime? The number one pasttime is avoiding responsibility. The number two pasttime is excoriating everyone else for the first one.

Hot juicy beef with a generous helping of sauce

Say that title while holding a fresh cooked burger from McDonald's or Burger King and people will think you're doing a commercial joke and not a very good one. Say that while holding your crotch and leering, and you're likely to be punched out.

It is in that spirit of noticing differences being dependant on circumstances and context that I note the new Burger King BK Stacker sandwich. A quadruple bypass meal of up to FOUR beef patties, cheese by the truck, and a good helping of bacon on their usual seeded bun; this new concoction might constitute your daily recommended calorie intake for a week and your fat intake for a month.

Did I mention the "Stacker Sauce"?

Feel free to write your own porn jokes.

Addendum: Go look up and see how many people in the USA have the last name Stacker with a first initial of B.

Internet Dickery

Is Internet Dickery a justification for requiring people to strap on a stun-gun circuit attached to their PC before posting online? Most days, the Internet certainly makes you think so, doesn't it?

Of course, the worse dickery to me is in the abject hypocrisy of the embracing of the blogging phenomena by people who abuse the shorthand "tl/dr" which means "too long/didn't read" everywhere else, and often enough in replies to blogs be they Blogger or Live Journal.

One wonders what will become of mankind when in the modern western world attention spans have shortned to less than those of a chihuahua on amphetamine at Starbucks when to actually think and then act on that ability by communicating what one knows has become a target for idiot dickery and insults. When the mere ability to think is regarded by the shallow and superficial as showing off, and the conveyance of one's intelligence is regarded as subtle bragging, then something has clearly gone wrong.

Of course, we knew that years ago. I guess the Internet is just good at reminding one that thinking, speaking, writing, and other endeavors requiring any sort of intellectual labor are ill regarded these days and that brainless thoughtless gliding through life is celebrated.

Oh well.

If anyone in my huge readership of two or four people are paying attention, you will have noticed that I've replaced the Emo Philips banner with an RHCE quiz. Why? Well certainly not because I like Emo any less. Emo Philips I mean. Emo music I detest. The reason is that I intend to have Linux+ certification by the first of August, LPIC I certification by the first of September, and LPIC II certification by the first of October. By the first of December I intend to have RHCE and by spring of the following year, RHCA. Ambitious for me, less so for some, more than for others. In the middle of all that I also intend to get Network+ and Security+ and maybe A+ along the way.

One needs goals I think even if we don't reach them. The true goals are the journey to the goals we make up for the journey.

In the name of the environment and saving mankind, mankind negates what makes it special: democracy and free will

At what point did the energy efficiency movement abandon the principles of a democratic republic that power flows from the people to government and not the other way around, and that government exists for mutual needs in concert with individual rights?

Taxes are now accepted as a way of *forcing* other people to do what we want now? Not by me.

It is the job of the technologists to come up with solutions to problems, the job of businessmen to find what will sell, the job of social-public writers to convince people of free will to make changes, but it is not the job of any one group of people to get the government to impose its police powers on the people to force them into compliance with a given set of ideas.

Even less so when those ideas are on the level of faith and beyond discussion or argument which much of the energy efficiency sector's behavior demonstrates and has since the sixties. It comes down to: "Earth will die if people don't do as we say, don't argue, do what we say."

This flies in the face of rational scientific exploration never mind democracy. History has many times heard the argument that doing/not doing X will result in Y hence our solution Z must be implemented or catastrophe will result. None of them ever ends well.

To demonstrate the ramifications of this insistance on abuse of governance to force specific economic and political beliefs, what do you think would happen when the tax suddenly nuclear skyrockets the cost of doing business for cable, satellite, phone, electrical, and other utilities' field services?

Will a simple five minute truck roll costing $200 be worth it to you? Put *your* money where *your* mouth is. If you truly believe a milage tax is okay, start adding a little extra to your utility bills today. Do it at the store too because everything came by truck. And tip everyone you do anything with because they'll be paying more.

I have faith in science and human tendency to come through in the end. I will not be cowed by nonsense pop-environmentalism and fear of catastrophe into giving up on that. We heard dire warnings in the 70s that were supposed to have finished us off by the 90s. I call bs on this and am confident that mankind will overcome.

I think it sets a new standard in irony that arrogant anthrocentrism is leading towards saving humanity by annhilating democracy and free will without which humans are no different than an internal combustion engine.

Fedora Core 5 Verdict

Not that anyone was asking for this, but I feel obligated to say it. With a little over two months of work with it, I have to give Fedora Core 5 an A+++. Excellent repos, much improved stability on KDE, and automatic installation slickness that rocks.

Right now, I have FC5 on a P4 2GHz box w/768MB RAM, and 2x250GB drives as software RAID 0, w/Ext3 on LVM. Samba took only the usual minor configuration to make work as an NT4 PDC for a Windows LAN. I now have what looks like a very stable household file server that kicks some serious ass.

My hat is off to the Red Hat and Fedora Core people on a job well done.

I would only like to request that FC6 contain an option on install to use an encrypting file system with LVM and software RAID to increase security as well as some sort of Gnome/KDE gui goodness to make Samba sit up and bark without tedious smb.conf editing.

Ghost in the Shell thermoptics getting closer

One can hardly wait to go out in one of these for a game of touch football.

I must be taking crazy pills

I must be taking crazy pills
As the gas prices in the USA continue to rise, the political hot air does too. More deadly than a methane clathrate release, this hot air seems to be headed for doing what the sun cannot, and that is slowly baking us to death. Ideal time to be a Montgolfier if you can get close enough to collect some.

I listened to NP(Z)R and their All (NO) Things (Logic) Considered. I watched the nightly network news. I listened to the radio. I read the newspaper. I threw up in my mouth.

IS ANYFUCKINGONE ACTUALLY THINKING LOGICALLY AND CLEARLY AT ALL??? I feel like Mugatu in Zoolander being the only one noticing that every one of Derek Zoolander’s looks is the same one look.

1. Oil Prices
   We’re not out of oil, we’re not running low, and we’re not running into problems getting to it and recovering it. We’re watching yet another market manipulation by OPEC and non-OPEC oil producing nations no different than the so-called energy crisis (that never was) of the 70s when we had even-odd license plate number rationing.If you believe the news, the shortage is being purposely caused by “Big Oil”, which in all cases is defined as strictly American oil companies.


2. Additives
   We’re requiring additives, neither of which are in proper supply, and given the long term supply picture and well known seasonal variations, the suppliers don’t have much of a choice on pricing.We could stop requiring the additives and eliminate a big chunk of the problem and you would think a looming economic disaster as a result of this collective unfunded mandate-a-thon on the people would spur someone to consider it. Well, you’d think that if you were maybe something other than a human from this point in history. The present inhabitants don’t notice this simplicity.


3. EPA Regulations
   Thanks to a congress that has for decades ignored the Constitution and simply delegated their authority away to various executive branch agencies which should not be a problem in the first place since those delegations are to enforce and dream up new regulations which neither branch should be doing under the theory of “government being the lesser competent of the two, the other being the people, they should do as little as possible”, we have an environmentally unhealthy obsession with fact and science free environmentalism where we make up regulations based on politics and not on science and logic. This didn’t work for Mao with the Chinese agricultural system and it won’t work for us.
   
   We have allowed the EPA and the various state environmental agencies to make a simple cost benefit analysis on the subject of renovation of oil refineries to modern EPA standards something so simple, your dog could do it. I’ll spoil it so don’t wait for the cable version: it’s pure profit due to ever increasing demand and obviously decreasing supply to close them down and pure loss to comply.


4. Consumption
   Unless you’re working out of your home, chances are you have to drive to work. I know of no business that wraps its schedule around some group of ninnies’ idiocy about the environment which is becoming yet again one of those lies that people always fall for like “it’s for the children”, “it’s to stop terrorism”, “the check’s in the mail”, and “I won’t come in your mouth”.
   
   Also, since we are becoming more affluent, we are more and more being able to afford to drive to work. If you live within walking distance of work, you either work out of the house or you have a really low end job for all places outside of downtown Manhattan and working in Manhattan can be its own punishment anyhow.
   
   We cannot simply stop driving to work, build ninety mile subway systems, knock down thousands of houses to put in new rail systems, infringe at will on others’ freedoms simply in the name of theories and social engineering.


5. TAXES
   Goodness knows we already pay too much money so the government can bribe us to vote them back in with our own money. In ancient days, robber barbarians noted that if they didn’t totally sack the agrarians, they could sack them just a little each year and then later on sack them a constant basis in return for not actually sacking them in the classic sense. You paid them to protect you from other robber bandits which they’d do anyways since you were their livestock, and if you didn’t they’d sack you themselves.
   
   Thus was born government and other protection rackets.
   
   One of their wonderful slow blood lettings is to hit us for money at the pumps every single time. Federal and state, there are taxes on the gas which serve only to make the situation worse.The government would have it that if it eliminated the taxes that it would be like a shoe horn and have done its job of expanding your wallet enough for that extra room freed up by the tax elimination to be taken up with increased oil company profits. The average consumer is apparently just stupid enough to believe this.

The best the politicians can do is to scream at each other and scream at American oil companies. They pose idiocy such as INCREASED taxes (SAY FUCKING WHAT?!) to force a change in consumption (as if you have a choice in driving to work or roller skating instead), INCREASING the ethanol/etc. blend requirements as if the supply problem that already exists at lower demand levels will magically eliminate itself and supply twice as much additives as they already cannot, TAXING the oil companies and thus giving a big FUCK YOU to countless Americans whose 401K plans invest in those companies, and giving you a $100 rebate check which at the current rate of increase will fill a single SUV in southern California in about one week from now.

Solutions are obvious. Eliminate as many taxes as possible on the gas in this country and give fair warning that taxes on the oil and gasoline companies will follow in retribution should they take up the slack by jacking up the price. Relax the regulations and declare an emergency and stop requiring additives that are in short supply and do everything possible to encourage increasing refinery capacity rather than discouraging it with insane environmental policies which make no sense because as a whole, they are dragging us to economic and social collapse and collapsed societies no longer care about the environment; they only care about survival and that means fuck the environment.

I keep hearing Princess Leia’s words in my ears about the tighter the grip and all. We seem to be locked into a crazy world of crazy people who are truly believing against all logic to the contrary that their actions will the opposite of what logic dictates. Counterproductivity. Inefficiency. Misdirection. Self-delusion. We’re drowning in a sea of idiocy and believing it’s holy water. If only it were gasoline.

What an Easter

What an Easter…
     So, was I the only gentile in a 2-1 Jewish home who got the double holiday?

     It began on Good Friday with my wife telling me about the weekend special dinner. I replied, “we’re not having naked horny guys with furry goat legs over for dinner.” She of course screamed, “that’s seder, s-e-d-e-r, NOT satyr!”

     Yeah, I knew, but it’s a yearly tradition. The only bitter herb I know was on WKRP and she threatened to throw a bottle of horseradish at me.

     So anyhow, we watched The Ten Commandments. Twice. Two different versions. I was aghast at the realistic portrayal of violence in the newer version, and at the future people of Israel being led around by the president of the National Rifle Association in the older one.

     My wife as is her skill waited until the last second to put up the roast, and then kicked it into maximum. Inside of two hours, it was about as tough as an old carpet and about as tasty. All oils had been removed and now encircled the meat in the cooker and the moisture boiled off like spit on an Arizona highway in July.

     Overcooked beef, beef drippings, water, crock pot and seasonings… beef soup.

     We couldn’t afford a lamb bone. Oh well. We couldn’t find candles until the second day of Hanukkah either. I think we got our Christmas tree up within a week of the day and bought Halloween handout candy on October 31.

     (insert rolling eyes emoticon here)

Odds n Ends

Odds n’ Ends
     Well, over this weekend a lot of things got done, and a lot of other things did not. Most importantly, the much needed cleaning and renovation did not. After the mortgage payment, there’s not much left over. Here’s hoping a family member moves back home with some money to kickstart things.

     What also did not get done was to find a good adoptive home for the five brand new kittens gracing our place. Well, sort of new. Old enough to eat like voracious… things that eat a lot. Beautiful gray tigers and one black kitten. Need to get to the vet to get some referrals to adoption centers she trusts. Don’t want them going to some asshole to use to train fighting dogs.

     What got done was my decision to move past shock, anger, and denial at the loss of data on an ext3 Linux partition holding my main Fedora Core 3 workstation’s data. I’ve used that box and abused that box for a year, but I made the spectacularly bad decision to remove an old unused Windows XP Home partition and move and resize the Linux partition using Partition Commander. Should have used Qtparted from a Knoppix boot CD instead. Managed to fuck things up so bad that between fdisk, parted, and fsck nothing could be done to retrieve it.

     This experience did teach me though that the majority of that partition was Linux stuff. Stuff that I installed as part of the full DVD install with everything including the onions, chilli, and the kitchen sink. I lost some PGP keys which I probably backed up to someplace or not. I lost some source code from dozen projects that I can resurrect from memory and improve on them when I do. I lost pr0n that I can download again anytime I want to get aMule up and running again.

     Now into acceptance phase, I decided to go back to experimenting. The FC3 boot disk will allow an FTP/HTTP install no problem. The FC5 disk not. WTF?! Hmmm… I shut down and swap out the cheap CNET Ethernet adapter with a 3Com which I have a case or two of on hand and suddenly the install goes right.

     I went out to do some shopping like buying a cheap USB2.0 external HD case to make use of a spare 40GB drive I had on hand which came with a used Dell into which instead went an 80GB drive from the previous Fedora box which had received a 250GB drive before it was rebuilt from Windows to Linux. When I got back, most of the network install was completed.

     Things like Really Slick Screensavers don’t want to install due to dependency Hell issues, but sooner or later I’ll manage. The new gnome-screensavers paradigm requires a .desktop file and a .xml file to go with each screensaver. Though I did find a nice way to make the skyrocket screensaver my desktop backround. I can get them on my box, just not where the screensaver preferences tchotchke will notice them, and yes, they’ve been copied to the right places and the .sh migration script run. Oh yeah, the new Gnome interface in FC5 doesn’t allow advanced manipulation of the settings for each screen saver. No advanced tab. Not as my normal login and not as root either.

     Oh well.

     I got the WinXPPro box to work, fileshare to work, and the USB external HD. Now I can shovel things about without problems.

     Meanwhile, the anti-stress pills prescribed for me after a stint at the hospital for chest pains are only making be drowsy and dizzy, not lowering my stress level. No, my heart is fine. Supposedly. Docs bombarded me with radiation and hooked up wires to my nipples, I felt so damn kinky. I was still pulling those sticky tabs off parts of me for two days.

     I should, if I can find the interest, start writing more.

VMWare Works

Well, after you spend two days fighting with Windows XP Pro to get that set up right to where you need and want it. Once that is out of the way, no problem.

So far I've gotten CentOS and Ubuntu to work and am going after Fedora Core 5. Windows tchotchke apps and Linux open source stuff all at once. I am in nerdvana...

Python code example for the heck of it...

Can anyone guess what this is?

def routerGet(ip):
     def snmpGet (ip, oidSpecific):
          from os import popen
          return popen("snmpget -v 1 -c public -O qv %s .1.3.6.1.2.1.%s" %(ip, oidSpecific)).read().strip('\n')
     
     def ipAdEntAddr(ip):
          from os import popen
          return popen("snmpwalk -v 1 -c public -O qv %s .1.3.6.1.2.1.4.20.1.1" % ip).read().splitlines()
     
     iAEA = ipAdEntAddr(ip)
     for walk in iAEA:
          if walk[:-1] <> '127.0.0.' and walk <> '0.0.0.0':
               ipAdEntIfIndex = snmpGet(ip, '4.20.1.2.'+walk)
               iAENM = '4.20.1.3.'+ walk
               iD = '2.2.1.2.' + ipAdEntIfIndex
               iT = '2.2.1.3.' + ipAdEntIfIndex
               iS = '2.2.1.5.' + ipAdEntIfIndex
               iIO = '2.2.1.10.' + ipAdEntIfIndex
               iOO = '2.2.1.16.' + ipAdEntIfIndex
               collect = map((lambda arg: apply(snmpGet, (ip, arg))), [iD, iT, iAENM, iS, iIO, iOO])
               ethlist = ['EN1', 'Eth', 'eth', 'ETH', 'ie0']
               wanlist = ['WAN', 'fra', '106', 'wan', 'ATM', 'FR-', '159']
               if collect[0][:3] in wanlist or collect[1][:3] in wanlist:
                    iftype="WAN"
                    if walk[:3] == "10.":
                         iftype="WAN Management:"
               elif collect[0][:3] in ethlist or collect[1][:3] in ethlist:
                    iftype="Ethernet"
               print iftype
               print "IP Address:", walk
               print "Subnet Mask:", collect[2]
               print "Interface Speed:", collect[3]
               print "Octets In:", collect[4]
               print "Octets Out:", collect[5], '\n'

It’s a script for extracting basic router network info from a router, namely SDSL/IDSL routers.

Slashdot post of mine, feeling frisky and ticked tonight

Simple solution(Score:3)
by suitepotato (863945) on Monday March 27, @07:24PM (#15007488)
Design a computer with tcp/ip, http, ftp, etc native onboard with a basic interface. It connects and downloads whatever OS you want and installs it without an OS already being onboard beyond the "super bios" skeleton OS there for doing the aforementioned primary OS download. That ends the chicken and egg argument as to having to have one OS already on there to download the OS you really want. No more "Windows tax", no more preloaded PCs unless you order them that way. Everything is bare.

DRM? Fine, put it on there so that OSes that require authenticity of initial downloaded files have it to check themselves on install. Those OSes that don't, can ignore it. No other shenanigans linking the thing to only those OSes (cough, Windows, cough) that rigidly adhere to the dogma that the PC user should be the b*tch of an **AA organization.

We could have done this years ago with a simple thing like QNX onboard and finished all this crap. No muss, no fuss, no tears. Simple, easy, even a Geico caveman could do it.

Need an architecture to allow the formatting? Fine, default to FAT16 and put the primary files needed there, boot to them, they extract and build and reboot and then connect out to whatever secure servers are needed to get the rest, and finish the customer partitions and formats. This is not hard to do people.

Why does this sort of obviousness keep missing people? MS can do f-all about bundling. I don't care. I actually like them to bundle. F knows I DON'T want to have to deal with a mini-VS to compile every frigging Windows app I want to add. I like it being done already. I like having things already bundled compiled on Linux and being able to add whatever later.

Want to open a can of worms? Which serious Linux user ain't been farked by the distro coming by default with code bases that are completely wrong for something we want to use? Like the wrong net-snmp version to use with yapsnmp? Okay, uninstall, remove, reinstall, rebuild, fail that thirteen times, write off certain other things, make do. I never have to deal with this on Windows. No such thing. I'm reasonably certain writing a wrapper to put SNMP functions in Python or any other language would be a lot easier on Windows than on Linux where the slightest change in files totally fouls everything up.

Okay, I've ranted enough. The quick and dirty and ultimately best solution is right in front of us. Make the average personal computer "smart" enough to be able to go get an OS of the user's choice whenever they need. The standards and frameworks are already on the shelf. We would rather not do it in favor of bashing Microsoft and wrapping our Linux using selves in victimhood. Whatever. Not my bag. I have a night of recompiling to get to.
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If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)

Forget Lords of Acid

Pussy is into Beastie Boys.

My cats were whining and meowing and I couldn't figure out why. They're fine, their bedding was washed recently, their food and water was full. Exasperated, I belted out, "whatcha watcha watch want? Watcha want? Tell me watcha watcha watcha want. Watcha want."

Who knew that cats like the Beastie Boys?