Blog

221 posts from 1996 to present • Page 8 of 12

2004

I’m In Ghana

2 min read

So I&8217;m writing this from a computer lab in Accra; it&8217;s nicely modern, with about 50 pentium 4-2000 machines, but it&8217;s about 1500ms to anything really interesting on the Internet backbone and the speed&8217;s not that fabulous. But it w...

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And Off to Ghana

2 min read

Oh boy. I&8217;m two days away from hopping on a plane to Accra, Ghana to go teach kids about science, technology, and the Internet. Much of our planning is very last minute as we&8217;re trying to slap together a curriculum, local sponsorship, etc....

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Thank You, President Bush.

3 min read

I would like to thank President Bush for his efforts to expand democracy around the world. He&8217;s done a really incredible job, but not in the way that he may have anticipated. In his efforts to found democracies on the other side of the globe, he...

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Cavafy: Ithaca

3 min read

The following is the poem &8220;Ithaca&8221; by the famous Greek poet Cavafy, in its translation by Rae Dalven, the original Greek, and also with my own horribly-bastardized pronunciation guide for the Greek. Note that the translation is not line-bas...

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A Letter To Brian

9 min read

I wrote the following letter to my pastor Brian Emmet at Covenant Ministries1, in response to his latest newsletter2, which decried permitting homosexual marriages....

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2003

Peace In The Middle East

3 min read

The middle east is pretty damn annoying. Specifically, the whole Israel / Palestine deal. I mean, it feels like there&8217;s good evidence that there are a very large number of totally reasonable people on both sides who are being totally ignored by...

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A Simple Strategy For Spam Control

2 min read

I&8217;ve recently employed a very simple mechanism for spam control. So far, it&8217;s been quite effective and required the installation of NO new software, tunable Baysian filters, or anything. So I thought I&8217;d share it with you....

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Why IPv6 Won’t Be Here By 2005

7 min read

This message was posted on October 27, 2003 to a mailing list in response to a post that claimed that IPv6 would be widespread by 2005 due to an IPv4 address shortage. Given that 2005 has come without IPv6 having taken off, this post feels vindicated...

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Formats

2 min read

For protocols there&8217;s Ethernet, TCP, IP, UDP, AIM in ICQ, OSCAR, and TOC flavors!, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, IRC, SOCKS5, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, POP3, FTP, Shoutcast, SSH, and Kazaa&8230;and that&8217;s just what&8217;s running on my desktop...

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Linux Unicode Support Sucks

3 min read

Unicode1 is just about the coolest thing since sliced bread. It&8217;s the kind of thing after which you wonder how things possibly worked previously. The idea is simple: one character set can represent any character in any language. There are a few...

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Professionalism

3 min read

I&8217;ve learned a lot in the last two years about what it means to be professional. Here are some of the things I&8217;ve learned; I hope you can learn them without having to be the fool I am! Please note that I&8217;m not smart enough to actually...

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Google: A Brain Extension

4 min read

Over the last few days a subtle error on the part of our home&8217;s gateway to the Internet rendered Google1 inaccessible. I was in agony. I was unable to write reports and actually felt rather stupid without it. I then realized I had effectively un...

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2002

The Perils Of Accidental Rudeness

4 min read

Just now, I did something horribly mean. I ignored a nice person on AIM that was having a delightful chat with me. And \BAM\, I ignored them, never to see a message from them again. I rebooted my computer and any and all traces of them were removed....

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On Leisure

3 min read

Looking at the great inventions and awesome creations of art that humankind has collectively produced, I can&8217;t help but notice a common theme: the need for leisure. Leisure here not meaning, sitting around and doing nothing at all, but the need...

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Presumed Backing

3 min read

I find myself dealing sometimes and indeed am guilty of a phenomenon that I would like to call &8220;Presumed Backing.&8221;...

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