So I went to a midnight showing of Episode III with some friends last night. All I can say is...

KICK ASS.

Lucas made up for the relative suckitude of Eps I and II with this movie. It was a non-stop rollercoaster ride the whole way through. And it leads beautifully into Episode IV.

I'm going to have to see this again in the theater before its run is over. And I'll definitely be picking up the DVD when it comes out!

There was lots of fun before the movie, with fans dressed in costume doing mock lightsaber battles in front of the screen... Unfortunately, it seems that all but two lightsabers were low on batteries! Still fun, though, and lots of cheering from the audience.

No spoilers here; it's still too early. Just go see the movie and get blown away. It's worth every penny even at the outrageous ticket prices these days...

I never expected my little Slashdot submission to make front page. I was also surprised by how many people thought my submission was a review, when it was just a quick mention of a Sony gadget few have heard of before that runs Linux. But it happened.

Slashdotted!

Interestingly enough, the server held up pretty well. Some friends said it went down for a few seconds at a time with "Too many connections" SQL errors, but the fact that the little box survived is impressive.

I got lots of flames directed at me about how much my submission sucks. Oh well, you can't please everyone. }:)

So today, a coworker brought in a Sony NSP-1. I had never heard of this gadget before; it is supposedly a signage controller, which is supposed to drive a projector or plasma display to display changing signs, videos, and so on. It's tiny; about the size of a DSS satellite receiver, and... it's based on Red Hat Linux!

Trouble is, nobody had any idea what the passwords were to log into its web interface. I also didn't know what the root password was, so I couldn't log into it at first. There was also no way to access the boot loader so I could tell LILO or GRUB to boot into single user mode. The only removeable media was a PCMCIA slot, and there's no way to boot off those.

Arrgh. After some fiddling with some DIP-switches on the back, though, I found that it has a standard PC BIOS! It can also boot from USB! So we grabbed an external USB CD-ROM drive, put in a Knoppix CD, and booted it up.

I promptly mounted the various partitions to find out where the heck the /etc/passwd file was. Whoever partitioned this thing must really enjoy themselves in fdisk, as there were ten partitions, and the actual root was the third! I finally located it, and nulled the password. One more reboot, and I was in! I found the .htaccess that controls the web interface (it's all open-source! I love it!) and reset the passwords.

Overall, a fun hack. Now I want one of these NSP-1s for myself, as they look like they make good video jukeboxes, but the price is a bit disconcerting: $2 grand! ARRGH!

(I disabled comments on this post because it's receiving a lot of spam comments. I'm not sure why. -Z 9/27/06)

Well, previously I mentioned the plump, well-fed tigers at Vanishing Species. Well, we are boarding the cutie you see at left! Her name is April, and she is from a sanctuary up north. Basically, they don't have the resources to care for a youngster, so VSW will be caring for her (and her sister up in Palmdale) until she is old enough to go back.

It was a great day; I played with April, and also Monty, who has grown considerably since the last time I saw him AND has been placed on the same tether at Sawgrass we use for the adults! It was fun to run up and down the tether and watch him chase and pounce at me.

I trimmed Monty's excessively sharp claws while he was sleepy; what's funny is he was actually better behaved than my own cat, Lynxie, when doing this! I got through all the claws with almost no trouble! Lynxie should take notice. }:)

I took quite a few pictures today; a tiger cub and a panther cub in one day is just too much to resist.

Today's pictures

Tiger cubs breastfed by woman die

Gee, I'm so surprised.

NOT!

You would think the staff of a zoo would know that human milk is inappropriate for cats. Even I know that, and I'm not a vet or an expert by any stretch!

Not to mention, one cub died several days before the other, which you'd think would have clued them into realizing "Gee, maybe human breastmilk is inappropriate for cats." But noooo.

Two innocent animals die because people don't know how to take care of them properly. I'd expect this to happen with untrained persons caring for cats, but a ZOO? What the hell?

Sorry, I just had to rant. All our tigers at Vanishing Species are healthy and plump and beautiful, and it's not like we're swimming in money there, either. This didn't have to happen.

-Z

Well, I finally got to visit VSW at Palmdale. It looks really nice! They basically have a nice tour set up, which is open to the public. I got to see Cheech and Chong again (Cheech was the first tiger I ever touched; he was a little cub back then and he's getting HUGE now!), the Four Rascals, a couple of adorable bobcats, and a new tiger cub I hadn't met before!

I was busy pretty much through the whole day, and didn't get a chance to take too many photos, but I got some of the cub. She's only four weeks old and was sleepy when I played with her. What a sweetie!

I wish I could volunteer up there more often. The big problem is the two hour drive in each direction! Thirty minutes each way to Davie is long enough; four hours of driving for a day of volunteering is way too much gas money!

Saturday's Pictures

You should always have these items in your laptop bag. They are infinitely useful when you need them, and not very expensive:

• CAT5 RJ45 Ethernet cable (straight through)
• CAT5 RJ45 Ethernet cable (crossover)
• RJ11 phone cable
• Headphones
• Cable with a headphone plug on one end, and stereo RCA jacks on the other
• Pair of RCA female-female adapters (to join stereo RCA cables together)
• S-video to composite video adapter
• Long (12 foot or more) S-video cable and composite cable
• DVI to VGA adapter
• PCMCIA to CF adapter
• Extension cord for power
• Install CD(s) for your favorite OS
• Knoppix CD
• Small screwdriver set
• USB card reader

With this list of supplies, you will never, ever have any trouble tackling any network, power, audio, or video situation you may run across in your geeky travels. Of course, if you have any other suggestions, serious or amusing, feel free to make them. }:)

So I was looking at some old logs, and was reminded of an (in)famous MUF (TinyMUCK programming language) programmer named Mystique.

Now, TinyMUCK programming is something that is done completely for free, without any form of payment. This is basically code that is used to perform various simple and complex functions on TinyMUCK servers, like FurryMUCK.

You'd think that since all this code is written for free, that the authors would have no problem letting anyone use it, like GPL code. Not Mystique, though!

Mystique was a control-freak in the extreme. One time I ported a program of hers onto FluffMUCK, before she added the "Licensing Agreement" (more later), and she somehow found out about it. I practically got torn a new one by her barrage of "you are violating my intellectual property! You a pirate! Thief!"

In retrospect, I probably should have told her to f**k off, booted her from FluffMUCK, and banned her IP from the game. But I didn't, and @chowned the code to her. Later on she vanished without a trace, leaving her code behind. One of her programs is still on the MUCK, but mostly unused.

Anyway, here is the insane license agreement she attached to all her code. I don't know how someone can get this paranoid and possesive about free software; she really should apply for a job at Microsoft:

Hereafter:

1. Mystique will be referred to as the Author.
2. Control is ownership of said item, able to change, manipulate, replace
or remove without exterior assistance.
3. Authorities are those who maintain, operate and govern the usage of
the muck within and outside of the virtual environment. This includes
the title Wizard.

Terms of Usage:

1. Use of this program is by permission of the Author ONLY.
2. NO editing or cross-muck transfers [known as porting] of this program are
allowed. Those who do so, are committing the act of Piracy, punishable
under local laws.
3. The Author must be of verifiable, connectable presence and in Control of
this program during ALL usage. If this program is removed from the
Author's Control, all of it's operation WILL be terminated immediately.
4. NO muck shall operate this program without the consent of the Author.
Doing so, circumvents all muck policies, AUP or legislation [on any media]
regarding restriction of legal obligations and places all muck Authorities
in the act of Theft, punishable by local laws.
5. This program does NOT apply to any policies which require replacements
found prior to shutdown. If this program is to be replaced, it remains
in Control OF the Author, until a replacement IS found. The Author
retains the right to shutdown this program at any time.
6. Muck Authorities must adhere to all of the above policies or the Author
maintains the rights to remove this program at any time, without warning.
7. The Author requires that the characters Slipstream or Lynx [or variants
there of], are *NOT* of official embodiment [known as Wizard or
Authorities]. If said become such, this program's operation will be
TERMINATED and removed, until such time when they are not.
8. The Author retains the right to maintain, change or replace this program
at any time without restrictions.

You know you're an internet oldbie/veteran if:

• ...you remember when "High speed dialup" actually was
• ...you had a Netcom FTP account
• ...you've used Trumpet Winsock
• ...you thought Pointcast was kind of neat
• ...you've ever read netnews on a VT100 terminal
• .....and you enjoyed it since it was so much faster than the dialups
• ...you remember when TCP/IP had to be installed as an option under Windows '95
• ...you had one of the first ICQ accounts and thought it was silly and would "never catch on"
• ...you mourned the day AOL users were let loose on the then-virgin Internet
• ...you've used a SLIP connection
• .....and you thought it was the best thing in the universe. A real IP address, holy crap!
• ...you remember when ISPs supplied a UNIX shell as standard with all accounts
• ...you remember when ISPs ONLY supplied a UNIX shell with the basic account; SLIP/PPP was extra!
• ...you tried to run a MUD under such an account and were yelled at by your ISP's sysadmin
• ...you made extensive use of SLiRP or TIA at one point
• .....and it was banned at your ISP/school so you renamed it "pine" or "emacs"
• ...you remember when you could post your E-mail address everywhere and receive no spam

You gotta love these products, that claim to passively do things that, in reality, would require a room full of scientific equipment to do, if it were even possible at all:

So, this company claims that just by being clamped over the fuel line of an engine, this product can radically alter the molecular structure of the fuel, without requiring any external power whatsoever?

Don't folks realize that if this were possible, and actually improved gas mileage, that such a device would already be installed in every new car on the market?

Of course not. People are gullible. Hopefully this company gets shut down for the scam they are perpetrating.

I blurred out the brand name because I don't want anyone actually falling for this and wasting a hundred bucks on a piece of not-even-so-fancy plastic.