About 10 years ago, when the internet was almost void of viruses and spam, I used to get email forwards that were so funny it I would find myself laughing out loud, all by myself, in the computer lab at St-Thomas Univerisy (Fredericton, NB, Canada). This following one, still cracks me up.
1. Make race car noises when anyone gets on or off.
2. Blow your nose and offer to show the contents of your kleenex to other passengers.
3. Grimace painfully while smacking your forehead and muttering: "Shut up, dammit, all of you just shut UP!"
4. Whistle the first seven notes of "It's a Small World" incessantly.
5. Sell Girl Scout cookies.
6. On a long ride, sway side to side at the natural frequency of the elevator.
7. Shave.
8. Crack open your briefcase or purse, and while peering inside ask: "Got enough air in there?"
9. Offer name tags to everyone getting on the elevator. Wear yours upside-down.
10. Stand silent and motionless in the corner, facing the wall, without getting off.
11. When arriving at your floor, grunt and strain to yank the doors open, then act embarrassed when they open by themselves.
12. Lean over to another passenger and whisper: "Noogie patrol coming!"
13. Greet everyone getting on the elevator with a warm handshake and ask them to call you Admiral.
14. One word: Flatulence!
15. On the highest floor, hold the door open and demand that it stay open until you hear the penny you dropped down the shaft go "plink" at the bottom.
16. Do Tai Chi exercises.
17. Stare, grinning, at another passenger for a while, and then announce: "I've got new socks on!"
18. When at least 8 people have boarded, moan from the back: "Oh, not now, damn motion sickness!"
19. Give religious tracts to each passenger.
20. Meow occasionally.
21. Bet the other passengers you can fit a quarter in your nose.
22. Frown and mutter "gotta go, gotta go" then sigh and say "oops!"
23. Show other passengers a wound and ask if it looks infected.
24. Sing "Mary had a little lamb" while continually pushing buttons.
25. Holler "Chutes away!" whenever the elevator descends.
26. Walk on with a cooler that says "human head" on the side.
27. Stare at another passenger for a while, then announce "You're one of THEM!" and move to the far corner of the elevator.
28. Burp, and then say "mmmm...tasty!"
29. Leave a box between the doors.
30. Ask each passenger getting on if you can push the button for them.
31. Wear a puppet on your hand and talk to other passengers "through" it.
32. Start a sing-along.
33. When the elevator is silent, look around and ask "is that your beeper?"
34. Play the harmonica.
35. Shadow box.
36. Say "Ding!" at each floor.
37. Lean against the button panel.
38. Say "I wonder what all these do" and push the red buttons.
39. Listen to the elevator walls with a stethoscope.
40. Draw a little square on the floor with chalk and announce to the other passengers that this is your "personal space."
41. Bring a chair along.
42. Take a bite of a sandwich and ask another passenger: "Wanna see wha in muh mouf?"
43. Blow spit bubbles.
44. Pull your gum out of your mouth in long strings.
45. Announce in a demonic voice: "I must find a more suitable host body."
46. Carry a blanket and clutch it protectively.
47. Make explosion noises when anyone presses a button.
48. Wear "X-Ray Specs" and leer suggestively at other passengers.
49. Stare at your thumb and say "I think it's getting larger."
50. If anyone brushes against you, recoil and holler "Bad touch!"
Friday, October 29, 2004
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Linux, Linux, where for art thou linux?
Well, I finally did it. I have been saying I will do it for a long time now. But, I have hat it with security holes, corporate shananigans, monopoly and shaddy software. So, in the garbage can went my Windows XP partition.
I no longer have windows, or any Micro$oft product, installed on my laptop! I am currently running with the penguins! (The penguin is the official Linux animal.) For those of you who are a little liss software oriented, let me explain a little bit about Linux. It is based upon the Unix operating system. It is an operating system, just like Microsoft Windows XP, NT, etc. Except one small difference, Linux is free. How is that possible? Software is so expensive. Well, not when it is develepped as open source. This means the source is available for anyone to download for free. Not only that, if you dont like something about the software (or in the case of Linux itself, the operating system), you can download the source and change it through a complete sweet of programming tools. Yes, the tools are free also. What? Oh, it gest better. Linux, once installed, is ready to be used. It comes with a 3 different versions of office software, (compatible with Microsoft Office documents) completely free. Free email software. Free games. Free tools. Free servers. Free development environments. Free databases. Free compilers. If Linux was a kitchen, it would also make coffee... for free. How is this possible? Oh, and did I mention that the security features that come with Linux can turn your computer into a virtual Fort Knox.
Linux would not have been possible without the work started by Richard Stallman in 1984 from MIT. He developped a buch of applications that he called GNU (for GNU is Not Unix). These included a C compiler and libraries. Without GNU Linux would not have been possible. The GNU tools initially ran on Unix and made for a free alternative to compilers that were available commercially. These gained rapid popularity as they were open source and quickly gaining functionnality through an international group of programmers excited at the idea of robust, reliable and scalable free software. Then, in the 1990's, man named Linus Torvald thought it would be a great idea to continue this idea and build an entire operating system in open source.
Fast forward to the year 2004. There numerous Linux distributions available, Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, Suse, Edulinux, Gentoo and the list goes on and on. There are almost as many distribuitions as there are uses for them.
The two most populare distributions on the market right now are Red Hat Fedora (Core 2), and Mandrake Community 10.1. You can download them freely from their respective websites. Both of these install pretty much by themselves, I found the installation process to be simpler than installing microsoft. Each site will provide detailed installation instructions. And if you do encounter a problem, there are numerous website forums and mailing lists that will provide quick and easy reference to fix whatever issue might arise. A lot of the time, you can even email the programmer who built the application to see if he can help (and they will respond, the Linux community is very friendly and helpfull).
So it is all really that great? Well, yes an no. Yes, because I don't have to be worried about security all that much anymore. As long as I keep my distrobution up to date and hide behind a firewall, I am pretty safe. Specially since the threat of getting a virus is almost zero with linux. Most viruses these days are writen for Mac or Windows and will not affect Linux/Unix systems. It is also great because I find software to do almost everything I want for free. Its also great because I can run servers right off my machine, without installing extra software. Servers like email servers, ftp servers, web servers etc. You can do so with windows also, but be prepared to shell out TONS OF MONEY. Linux = free. Also, Linux takes a lot less resources from your processor to run, so expect a better performance from Linux than you would from other currently available.
But there is a downside. Not all hardware components are supported by Linux. After an entire week of running Linux, I have not figured out how to get my Wi-Fi card to work, but everything else, digital camera, sound card, video, ethernet card, cd burner, dvd player and mouse all worked with NO extra configuration. Oh, and did i mention I am running all of this on a laptop? Phenomenal. Another thing, there are some specific Microsoft things that you will not be able to do. Forget about visiting any specific websites such as MSN.COM who work exclusively on Internet Explorer. And you can forget about playing the latest computer games on Linux. But you can always keep a seperate partition on your hard drive and boot into the other operating system if you have special needs that cannot be met by Linux. (I suggest to any beginner to have 2 partitions, 1 for yoru current OS and one for Linux.)
But what about me? I am running Mac OS X Panther. Well guess what: you are already running Linux. *gasp* You don't have to do anything to take advantage of the Linux open source community. You just need to do a bit of reading. Apple, in a brilliant move, released its last OS on top of a LINUX kernel. More details are available on the Apple website.
I suggest to you all, to do a bit of research on Google and find out more about Linux.
Do not be scared to email me your questions if you do want to give Linux a test drive.
Be warned, Linux is not Windows. It is an operating system that is built by nerds for nerds. But as it continues to evolve, it is becoming simple enough to be used for desktop users and home PCs.
I no longer have windows, or any Micro$oft product, installed on my laptop! I am currently running with the penguins! (The penguin is the official Linux animal.) For those of you who are a little liss software oriented, let me explain a little bit about Linux. It is based upon the Unix operating system. It is an operating system, just like Microsoft Windows XP, NT, etc. Except one small difference, Linux is free. How is that possible? Software is so expensive. Well, not when it is develepped as open source. This means the source is available for anyone to download for free. Not only that, if you dont like something about the software (or in the case of Linux itself, the operating system), you can download the source and change it through a complete sweet of programming tools. Yes, the tools are free also. What? Oh, it gest better. Linux, once installed, is ready to be used. It comes with a 3 different versions of office software, (compatible with Microsoft Office documents) completely free. Free email software. Free games. Free tools. Free servers. Free development environments. Free databases. Free compilers. If Linux was a kitchen, it would also make coffee... for free. How is this possible? Oh, and did I mention that the security features that come with Linux can turn your computer into a virtual Fort Knox.
Linux would not have been possible without the work started by Richard Stallman in 1984 from MIT. He developped a buch of applications that he called GNU (for GNU is Not Unix). These included a C compiler and libraries. Without GNU Linux would not have been possible. The GNU tools initially ran on Unix and made for a free alternative to compilers that were available commercially. These gained rapid popularity as they were open source and quickly gaining functionnality through an international group of programmers excited at the idea of robust, reliable and scalable free software. Then, in the 1990's, man named Linus Torvald thought it would be a great idea to continue this idea and build an entire operating system in open source.
Fast forward to the year 2004. There numerous Linux distributions available, Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, Suse, Edulinux, Gentoo and the list goes on and on. There are almost as many distribuitions as there are uses for them.
The two most populare distributions on the market right now are Red Hat Fedora (Core 2), and Mandrake Community 10.1. You can download them freely from their respective websites. Both of these install pretty much by themselves, I found the installation process to be simpler than installing microsoft. Each site will provide detailed installation instructions. And if you do encounter a problem, there are numerous website forums and mailing lists that will provide quick and easy reference to fix whatever issue might arise. A lot of the time, you can even email the programmer who built the application to see if he can help (and they will respond, the Linux community is very friendly and helpfull).
So it is all really that great? Well, yes an no. Yes, because I don't have to be worried about security all that much anymore. As long as I keep my distrobution up to date and hide behind a firewall, I am pretty safe. Specially since the threat of getting a virus is almost zero with linux. Most viruses these days are writen for Mac or Windows and will not affect Linux/Unix systems. It is also great because I find software to do almost everything I want for free. Its also great because I can run servers right off my machine, without installing extra software. Servers like email servers, ftp servers, web servers etc. You can do so with windows also, but be prepared to shell out TONS OF MONEY. Linux = free. Also, Linux takes a lot less resources from your processor to run, so expect a better performance from Linux than you would from other currently available.
But there is a downside. Not all hardware components are supported by Linux. After an entire week of running Linux, I have not figured out how to get my Wi-Fi card to work, but everything else, digital camera, sound card, video, ethernet card, cd burner, dvd player and mouse all worked with NO extra configuration. Oh, and did i mention I am running all of this on a laptop? Phenomenal. Another thing, there are some specific Microsoft things that you will not be able to do. Forget about visiting any specific websites such as MSN.COM who work exclusively on Internet Explorer. And you can forget about playing the latest computer games on Linux. But you can always keep a seperate partition on your hard drive and boot into the other operating system if you have special needs that cannot be met by Linux. (I suggest to any beginner to have 2 partitions, 1 for yoru current OS and one for Linux.)
But what about me? I am running Mac OS X Panther. Well guess what: you are already running Linux. *gasp* You don't have to do anything to take advantage of the Linux open source community. You just need to do a bit of reading. Apple, in a brilliant move, released its last OS on top of a LINUX kernel. More details are available on the Apple website.
I suggest to you all, to do a bit of research on Google and find out more about Linux.
Do not be scared to email me your questions if you do want to give Linux a test drive.
Be warned, Linux is not Windows. It is an operating system that is built by nerds for nerds. But as it continues to evolve, it is becoming simple enough to be used for desktop users and home PCs.
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