The Great Geek Manual

I love old science fiction. I’d rather be watching an episode of the Twilight Zone for the hundredth time than just about anything else on television. I find it fascinating to watch science fiction technology become science fact. Everyone knows that Star Trek inspired about a hundred technological advancements. It’s been the subject of a number of documentaries, including How William Shatner Changed the World and at least three Discovery Channel specials. But every now and then, I spot a little something that seems to have sprung from other classic sci-fi series.

I stumbled across an example just this weekend, while watching old reruns of Blake’s 7 – the wrist communicator.

Here’s the Science Fiction, screenshots from the Blake’s 7 episode “Assassin”. In the screenshots give you a good look at the second version of the Blake’s 7 wrist communicator.

Buzzword Compliant is calling Hackety Hack the “Harry Potter programming language.” What is Hackety Hack? Yeah, I didn’t know either.

It turns out that Hackety Hack is a Ruby-based environment, created as part of a manifesto entitled “The Little Coder’s Predicament” written in 2003 by a programmer known by the handle “why the lucky stiff” or just “why” for short. The language is a highly streamlined combination of conversational Ruby code and a no-brainer install environment. It’s purpose is to reawaken the interest in programming in younger generation that was rampant back in the eighties.
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If I’m not sitting at the keyboard of my computer, then my bittorrent client is up and running. For thirty dollars a month, I’m not wasting a minute of bandwidth. The problem is that the downloads need a bit of a tweak now and again. I like to throttle back on the most popular torrents once they’ve finished, so that my other downloads have a chance at finishing. I also like to reactivate my completed downloads to seed once I have what I need for the day. But how can I do that while I’m at work? As usual, the Gods of the Internet have provided a solution.
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Ever wonder why it costs one hundred sixty dollars to buy a copy of Windows Vista here in the US?

Microsoft spent millions of dollars advertising its next generation OS ‘Windows Vista’ in China, in fact the IT juggernaut threw up the biggest Vista Ad on the 421 meter high Jin Mao tower in Shanghai China. However after 2 weeks (Jan 19 to Feb 2) from launch Microsoft managed to sell a mere 244 copies of Windows Vista. Software piracy is rampant in the middle kingdom and a pirated version of Vista sells for a mere $1 on the streets. The following numbers are quoted by Windows Vista chief distributor in Bejing.

Source: Japan’s IT Media via Newlaunches.com

Just when you thought it was safe to surf the web, that the nineties were vanquished and gone, along comes the latest trend in webdesign – animated favicons! OMG! It’s like a little time capsule right there on your tool bookmarks toolbar… and a migraine right behind your eyeballs.

Noted offenders include:
BugmeNot (http://www.bugmenot.com/)
Linux Forums (http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/faq.php) Et tu, Linux? Et tu?!!
Pod1 (http://www.pod1.com/) web designers who should know better

Luckily, I’ve figured out a simple solution for removing irritating favicons:
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I can really never say enough about Google. I first started using Google back in the days when Google was written in quotes (”Google”) and people still used AskJeeves, and I’ve never strayed. When GMail was released, I was deliriously happy. I never thought that Google could become more useful, but somehow, it has.

Months ago, I began using my big, beautiful GMail account as a storage bin to shuffle files between computers. At first, I started out using a script called the GMail Drive shell extension. GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. It actually adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag files to your .GMail Drive.
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David Biedny of MacLife has posted an in-depth, up-close look at Photoshop CS3 this week. Check it out at: http://www.maclife.com/article/inside_photoshop_cs3

Recognizing the Problem
The first step in surfing the net anonymously is admitting you have a problem. To do that, you need to take a look at just how much information about your system websites can collect.

AltaVista provides a simple demonstration of how much information about your system can be collected by a single webpage.

BrowserSpy can tell you all kinds of detailed information about you and your browser, such as the version of your browser and which formats it supports and doesn’t. Furthermore it can provide you detailed information about JavaScript, Java, Plug-ins, Components, Bandwidth, Language, Screen, Hardware, IP, Cookies, Web Server, and much more….

Privacy Analysis of Your Internet Connection gathers and displays basic information about your system, what operating system you’re running, your screen resolution, what sites you’ve visited, your general system setup, etc

Use Proxies
There are a lot of sites out there that list pages and pages of free public proxy servers. Here are a few of them:
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