existence trainer

I'm sure there are more than this, but the two sites I recently discovered are Hack This Site! and Hellbound Hackers . Both are lots are lots of fun and very educational, though I prefer Hackthissite.org more. Lately I've been working on the Programming Missions, which on both sites are timed missions. For example, on hackthissite.org the first programming challenge is something like: Find the original (unscrambled) words, which were randomly taken from a wordlist [linked]. Send a comma separated list of the original words, in the same order as in the list below. You have 30 seconds time to send the solution. List of scrambled words: 1bbabu wtenrae heysehr oeibod siektnr padssw urpeoe lechmil hpiillp oe1ums You then have an input box and a button to click to send in the answer. The actual programming part of this mission is fairly straitforward (though I'm sure there are a number of different approaches), but what

I'm a hardy supporter of Linux based OSes, but I recognize there are certain weakness that keep those interested away from using as their standard OS. Here is my list of the main weaknesses of Linux on the Desktop. It seems to me the main weakness is in the application arena. This, though, is a definite improvement from a couple of years ago - where a great deal of hardware didn't work, and if it did it often had to be configured by hand after scouring internet forums. Now, its pretty easy to get Linux distributions like Ubuntu up and running without problem or incident on many a laptop and desktop. In fact, recently it has been my experience that it is quite a bit easier than getting XP working from scratch. If you have a SATA hard-drive and you've misplaced your old hardware drivers, then good luck! I also don't think the Linux Desktop looks shoddy, cluttered, and/or too techie anymore. The Standard Gnome or KDE interface is slick and streamlined, and few distributors

A good, short article appeared on this not too long ago in the Wall Street Journal. Its worth a read. According to this article the main differences come down to this: Obama: Bigger role for the government in promoting alternatives to oil (though in what way - through incentives or through subsidizing?) and regulating emissions. Promises to invest 150 billion dollars in alternative fuels. Supports nuclear if we come up with "a safe, long-term solution for disposing of nuclear waste". McCain: More of a market based approach. His record shows a resistance to supporting mandates and tax credits. I suppose, ultimately, this just means that the federal standards on emissions would be more lax, and he would be less willing to spend tax dollars on less promising alternative fuels. It is not clear to me, though, exactly what role he things the government should have. Is it just to get out of the way? On a different note: I'm not sure what I think about drilling. I know Obama opp

If you don't want to install the alpha2 version of Intrepid, why not try the livedisc? "What?", you say? "I didn't think that it would be available until alpha3". Well... officially it isn't, but you can still try the version that is cooking... if you know where to find it! It can be found here . Have fun! Note: unfortunately, I have not been able to get these to work with VirtualBox. Technorati Tags: ubuntu , Intrepid

I new it had canals and whatnot, but I didn't picture this!

There are certain applications on Windows that are just better than anything on Linux. When it comes to PIMs, a LOT of them are better than those available on Linux. In fact, most of the Linux one's suck. I've written about this before , but I'm annoyed enough now that I want to revisit it. In particular I want to compare what I think is a pretty good freeware PIM on Windows - Essential PIM, with the best thing that Linux has to offer presently - Evolution. By in large, there is not much of a comparison. EssentialPIM is FAR better than Evolution as a PIM. It is flexible in ways I doubt Evolution will Ever be (which makes me sad - because I want Linux to have superior or at least equally compatible apps). Here is a list of features that make EssentialPIM superior (and this is by no means exhaustive): Screen Real Estate First, EssentialPIM has much better screen real estate. EssentialPIM has a menubar, and then the rest of the window is used by some aspect of the program. Evo

Its simple to do, but how to do it is a little hard to find: alt+F2 Technorati Tags: Ubuntu

An announcement hasn't yet been made, but I just noticed that alpha2 isos have just been uploaded here . It appears there isn't a live disc option yet. Hopefully its more stable than alpha1. Technorati Tags: ubuntu