Xoke.org

So I’m working again as most people know.  Odd as it’s as a contractor and it’s very complicated.  Anyway so we had to use our own equipment and we haven’t spent time tidying it up as we’re in a temporary location.  This is what the office looks like:

(Click for the larger image)

You can’t see but there is another machine just below where the picture ends (hence the cables running that way).  Also note the mountain dews (more are there behind monitors!)

Highlighted picture below, as you can’t really see everything:

FOUR red highlighted laptops (one is hidden by another one almost)

FOUR green highlighted routers.  Or maybe only three.  I’ve lost track now.  I highlighted four though.

ONE blue server (aka the boss’s desktop PC)

Four running laptop, three network hubs, two mountain dews and an overpowered gaming machine?  Sounds almost like a song!

Sadly only my laptop and the server are running Linux though

** UPDATE **

Four routers.  Only three plugged in though.

I thought this was so awesome I had to mention it.  Basically someone made a Bento Box (Japanese lunches of rice and sushi or whatever in decorative shapes) of Half Life Headcrabs.  With a crowbar and half-life logo on the side!

I'm not going to steal the pics and put them here, although I did look for an email address for her to ask but didn't find one.  Anyway to there and look and see how awesome they are.

I'm wondering what she could do next… trying to think what other games you could do something similar.  Things like Grand Theft Auto might be a little hard to do (and would just be a car and a gun and could be from almost anywhere).

Can anyone else think of a game bad guy that is obviously just from that game?

For anyone who doesn't know, UNIX time (which is number of seconds since Jan 1st 1970) hit 1234567890 now.

Yay!

Yeah I'm a geek.

We discussed this on Linux Cranks last night and I attempted to do justice by reading it.  Here is the text I was trying to read.

Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…

Damn kids. They’re all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950′s techno brain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world…

Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…

Damn under achiever. They’re all alike.

I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me… Or feels threatened by me… Or thinks I’m a smart-ass… Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.

And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found.

“This is it… this is where I belong…” I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…

You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of out-smarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.

The Mentor. 08/01/1986