NEduard's blog

Sabayon: the cutest, free Operating System

2011-03-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

Long gone are the days of meddling w/ the frame buffer in Debian. Today, I've settled on a Gentoo-based distribution called Sabayon.

Disclaimer: this post does in no regards say that a distribution is better than any other; I'm not looking for a flame-war, I'm just stating my own personal opinion on what lead me to use the distro I use today.

It's true that when I used Ubuntu I didn't have the knowledge I have now, but it felt to me like compiling (eg. pulling all of the dependencies for a package was quite a hard thing to do, since the source packages were separate), that was the reason why I starting looking for an alternative. Of course I came across Gentoo, which is basically a compiloaddict. The problem with Gentoo was that in order to compile big packages, openoffice (before it became "libre"), kde, wine, firefox, etc, you needed time and a lot of CPU cycles. So although I felt that Gentoo came really close to what I wanted in a distro: few default packages, up-to-date, complete control over the system eg. the ability to customize everything, easily, etc; it simply wasn't worth all the wait for them (the packages) to compile. Also Gentoo didn't work out of the box, which although I didn't have no complaint over was still an extra step in making a fully functional system.

A lot of the distros I tried satisfied many, but not all of what I wanted:

Fedora and SuSE for example were packed with new packages, worked out of the box, but they felt bloated as they had a lot of packages installed by default. Many of them I had no interest in (bluetooth manager), but others such as SELinux started automatically and that meant reading documentation about how it worked and how to configure it.

Slackware on the other hand, although seemed good at first, didn't supply new packages.

So, after looking on distrowatch.com for my next distro to try out, I came across Sabayon:

Sabayon Linux is a Gentoo-based distribution which follows the works-out-of-the-box philosophy, aiming to give the user a wide number of applications that are ready for use and a self-configured operating system. Sabayon offers the user an easy-to-use workspace with a captivating look, good hardware detection and a large number of up-to-date software packages installed by default, with additional software available from a repository. Sabayon is available in several flavors featuring respectively the KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and Enlightenment desktop environments.

Wait... works-out-of-the-box, up-to-date software, Gentoo-based? Yes, It was all that I needed... it was perfect
Since then I've been happily using it and I would gladly recommend it to anyone who knows the difference between "du" and "df".

Now to talk about why I think Sabayon is awesome:
1. A lot of precompiled packages, that are fairly up-to-date, but more importantly not installed by default.
2. Gentoo-based: with a little bit of care and attention you can emerge the latest packages with no problems
3. Looks awesome! KDE 4.6.1 ftw, and I think the update window was of about one week after the official release, so not a lot of waiting.
4. works out of the box, just slam the livedvd in and you're set to go!

The first two points are the most important for me and even though you may find a bit outdated packages in the repository (binary packages), as was the case for dev-util/qt-creator-1.3.1 , you can simply emerge the latest version. You have to be careful about NOT emerging the dependencies also (use the binary packages to satisfy them). That way when the new version is available in the repo, you simply unmerge it and install it normally.

So far I've got nothing to complain about, the community's great, they've got forum, wiki, bugtracker, irc, mailing lists etc, so you'll never be short of finding help if you have a problem. It doesn't have a lot of 'distro'-specific packages (coubuntugh cough) and it works! it simply works great and it allows you to modify whatever you please. Just... don't go cursing if you... "accidentally your xorg" ^_^">

Not "red pill OR blue pill" but more like "red pill and MIGHT've been blue pill"

2011-03-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

In my previous article I covered, from my point of view, the subject of free will. After rereading it, I became aware of some of the logic faults it contained and decided to give the matter a bit more thought.

This concept is always bugging me because it seems that we are constantly constrained by the decisions we "make". Somebody even suggested that my logic basically implies destiny, well I don't believe in destiny, because of the effects of quantum mechanics. Still, I came to realize that we are not far from the concept of predeterminism.

Now I am an atheist and that means that I don't believe in concepts like "souls"; also, I consider human beings and living organisms in general to be nothing more than extremely complex systems but which are undoubtedly ruled by both the cause and effect principle and in some cases random outcomes. In other words I don't see the fundamental difference between a human and something as a bunch of rocks reacting to the changes in environment, and also at the same time, influencing some changes on their own (except of course for the level of complexity). This I admit might be a weak link in my argument.

Now let's look at a simple event A that occurs in the present and then determines a event in the future (event B).

If we know what the effects for event A are we can predict event be occurring in the future. Now let's say event A is something you hear; event B is something you do. Now since B is caused by A, we can not say B was done out of free will.

One might argue that we can not predict with certainty anything. True, but when are we not at the mercy of a quantum outcome? Consider the example of choosing between two colors: red or blue (no... of course it has nothing to do with the title, no...). Your neurons start firing and, for the sake of simplicity let's say that there is one (let's call it P) that is connected to two other neurons: R and B (or "B and R" if you like, depends on your taste). If P fires a signal to R then you choose red, to B, you choose blue. The neuron that P will fire a signal to is influenced by quantum mechanics (random). But notice how your decision isn't actually made by "you" but by the outcome of that random event.

Ok, as with a lot of what I write: first I the idea pops into my head, I think about it, I write about it, then I decide to google it and see many more who had the same idea way before me. Still, it feels good knowing that I came to the same conclusions without knowing about those people.

In regards to this post, the subject I found out is called Incompatibilism it's also linked to Hard determinism as well. a

Still, I'm not done talking about this free will thing, as will see in a future post (sorry, had to make this reference to determinism)

Red pill or blue pill

2010-03-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

I remembered last night a topic that I forgot to cover here, more precisely the subject of free will.

It occurred to me a while back, when somebody mentioned the fact that since our minds are defined by the synapses our neurons make and since the synapses are to some extent *semi-random events we can't have free will.
*semi-random as in predictable to a certain degree, like 95% chances that will happen 4% chances this will happen and 1% complete randomness.

The way I see it, quite the opposite's true. But first, let me get a thing straight: here, "free will" means one's ability to make decisions "as wished", or in other words, nobody should be able to tell with complete certainty what decision one will make in any given situation. Note that I'm NOT referring to free will as the right to do anything we wish.

If we consider the semi-randomness of our thoughts, then free will is possible. If however, our brains behave in classical terms, as in governed by the 'cause-effect' law, then we are deterministic. You could then think that a human brain could be simulated by a Touring Machine (more simply, it could be simulated by a computer). But a Touring Machine is defined as a set of states and a law of transition that transforms one state into another. It can not have, by definition, free will.

Now presume we act in the same way and it's pretty easy to see why we would do this if you believe in evolution: we'll always choose the option which gives us the greatest benefits at the moment of decision. You may quickly dismay that by arguing that people can do sacrifices, but if you think about it, the comfort they gain knowing they made some sacrifice and that a loved one / friend will be happy is greater than if they wouldn't have done nothing (in that case, guilt would be the main cause of discomfort).

If we also think our neurons of acting according to strict rules; as in if neurons A and B are connected to C and a rule such as if A and B don't fire then C doesn't fire also; A fires B doesn't fire then C fires; A doesn't fire B fires then C fires; A and B both fire then C doesn't fire (C acts as an "exclusive or" for A and B). Note that this is just an example of a rule, in reality they are probably way more complex but still remain strict.

Based on these two, evolution and strict neuron-firing rules, one can conclude that we behave deterministically. This means that there can exist a person / entity which can figure out what we'll do in any situation (presume it has complete knowledge of the way our brain is wired), then this entity can predict what course of action we will take in any circumstances. Then, because our course of action becomes known beforehand, we cannot have free will.

Now as I've said, this argument rests on basically on two assumptions, that we always chose the most profitable alternative and that our neurons don't fire at random or semi-random, because if they would, there may be the possibility of an alternative choice which isn't considered by our mind, and that missed alternative is a random one, thus the first assumption will yield different results, even if our brains are in the same 'states'.

This was a little far-fetched scenario, because not even I don't think the second assumption is true.
But here comes the shocker:
Even if our neurons fire in semi-random patterns, it's true that nobody will be able to predict how we will act. But our feeling that we are in charge of our actions becomes an illusion. In fact I've failed to find an example in which this is NOT one.

Let's presume you have a choice of choosing one of two pills, one blue, one red (this doesn't have to do anything with the Matrix movie). What happens when you take the decision? Your neurons start firing and by a random or semi-random chance you get to pick blue (even if my first assumption is true, the decision will be influenced by some neuron randomness). Now truth be told, you could have just as well picked the red one. So the problem is that you didn't pick blue because you wanted but because chance made you pick it. This has led me to believe that free will is just an illusion, and that we are forever confined in our minds, just spectators to what our sense organs tell us is happening around us, with no power to change the inevitable course of randomness.

Wowzer, now that was bit of a fine ending if you ask me. In anycase, that's the conclusion I've came to, hopefully, somebody will prove me wrong, but until then I can only say that I'm just going to sit back and see what this body of mine will do heh.

The Atheist's Riddle - attempt to solve

2009-12-22T08:58:00.000-08:00

Longtime no write... oh well, here I go again:
This time, it's about something I read a long time ago and namely The Atheist's Riddle. To put it simply it states that information can only be created by a conscious entity and since DNA is also information (genetic one), it MUST have been created and not spontaneously/randomly appear. Here are two examples of it, the first is the original one I received on an email and that got me thinking, the second one is just another restatement of it I found on the net.

"Messages, languages and coded information never,

ever come from anything else besides a mind.
No one has ever produced a single example of a message 
that did not come from a mind.

Nature can create fascinating patterns - snowflakes,
sand dunes, crystals, stalagmites and stalactites.  Tornados 
and turbulence and cloud formations.

But non-living things cannot create language. They
*cannot* create codes.  Rocks cannot think and they
cannot talk.  And they cannot create information.

And the second:

Proof that DNA was designed by a mind:
1. DNA is not merely a molecule with a pattern; it is a code, a language, and an information storage mechanism. 2. All codes we know the origin of are created by a conscious mind.
3. Therefore DNA was designed by a mind, and language and information are proof of the action of a Superintelligence.

This has kept itself on the back of my mind for I guess around an year since I first received the email with it.
In that time, I came up however with two possible theories to explain it:

My first attempt was based on the interesting property of DNA (and RNA for that matter) that is to replicate. I thought that given the right conditions you can obtain a molecule that is stable and that can interact with other matter around it, creating copies of itself. This consumes work and thus the molecule would probably have to unbind some part of it in order to have energy to make the replication. It could then reform itself to it's complete state by re-assimilating the missing part using some sort of external energy (solar, geothermal, etc).
Problem with this theory is that after you get enough copies of this molecule, nothing happens so then I though that maybe it could sustain modifications and still retain it's properties, then you could have something very similar to RNA.
Still, it requires the chance to have spontaneous creation of the first molecule, but it's pretty decent as a first explanation of the riddle.

My second attempt was a few days ago, when I asked myself "what is information?". The riddle states that
"[rocks] cannot create information". But as it turns out information can spontaneously appear in nature, even more often than you might think about. This is based on a definition of information I came up with:

A region in space that has an entropy value different than the rest of it's surroundings.

Note that I do NOT know if it is a correct definition, but it seems that everything that has a lower/higher entropy contains some sort information.

Oh, I'm assuming you know what entropy is, if not I strongly recommend you look it up on the internet, but in case you prefer to continue reading, entropy is basically a measurement of how much something is disorganized. So, for example a row of soldiers has a lower entropy (is more organized) than a crowd of people.

The key is to note that information in this form occurs very often in nature, take for example a tornado it leaves a mark on the terrain it traversed, it obeys the first law of thermodynamics, as it does work (spins) in order to leave a mark on the ground. That mark is information: information that a tornado passed, it contains maybe the side and speed of it. Now there may be a big step from tornadoes to the creation of life, but I've shown that there nature is capable of producing information. This information could take form in RNA (though I admit it's a big leap) or DNA

Don't you just hate...

2009-05-28T23:25:00.000-07:00

... the number of days in a week? I mean have you ever though of doing something twice a week with equal time intervals between each day? Or maybe three times a week or four times. It's impossible, now my question is why choose 7 days to determine a weekly cycle? Those early Christians didn't put much thought in prime numbers because if they did, they would've recognized it as a prime and chose a different one. The Sumerians were much smarter, they used multiples of 12 (actually it was a hexadecimal base): think about it: 60 = 5 * 12 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 12 months in a year, (almost) 360 = 60 * 60 days in a year.
The cool thing about 12 is that a lot of divisors. You can divide it equally by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Giving you lots of options to partition your week. So, if you ask me, God should have created the Earth in 12 days

... when you are tired and want to go to sleep, but you can't because you're anxious about something and finally when you fall asleep you have one of those weird dreams in which you stumble and have a sensation of falling and then wake up, with your whole body twitching?

... (this one only applies of you generally read science magazines) articles that always give an introduction to subjects a little more advanced like 'special relativity' or 'uncertainty principle' but it's always the same thing you heard time and time again. People that read that kind of stuff, generally know what those subjects are and if they didn't they would search the Internet, find out and then return. You don't need to introduce things like what causes earthquakes each time you have an earthquake-related article for example.

Are we not alone?

2009-03-13T03:56:00.000-07:00

For a long time I thought that aliens could have not visited us due to the immense distances between star systems.
Yesterday however, I started thinking about the twin paradox and realized that it could be used to send creatures from one star system to another and have them travel the distance in a very short time. This idea crossed my mind a long time ago, but now, after reading a bit on my favourite 'book', Wikipedia do I see that I was in fact correct.

Ever heard of the "Twin Paradox"? It's a famous example of special relativity: say you have 2 identical twins both 20 years old. One stays on Earth (let's call him Andrew) and the other (named Benjamin) flies in a space-ship close to the speed of light. When he returns to Earth, from his point of view, 5 years later, he finds that his brother aged 60 years. Now how is this possible? During the trip Andrew aged only 5 years, while his twin 60. The interesting part is actually managed to cover in 5 years a distance that light would have traversed in say 50. Note that we consider two frames of reference, so Andrew didn't actually went faster than the speed of light.

The paradox is related to relative motion, so basically why did the stationary brother age faster? Shouldn't the fact that speed is relative mean that we could've consider Andrew stationary but in that case he would have aged, and we know that Benjamin is the one aged... contradiction. This isn't important here (a possible explanation if you must, could be given by accelerated motion).

Now, with a little help from Wikipedia, let's give a more accurate example: Say an alien race (let's call them Zorgonians), found our planet 1 billion years ago. I would recommend you pay attention to the time-line because we're talking in relative terms here. After analysing the constituents of Earth's atmosphere they found out that it could support life. Zorgonia, their home planet is located some 100,000 light years from us (100000 ly is about the diameter of the Milky Way), so what they were seeing was actually the Earth 1,000,100,000 years ago. They sent a ship equipped with the Faztzorg-9800 engine that can reach a speed of 98% of the speed of light, carrying a crew of Scientzorgs. Given it's speed, the space ship should reach Earth in 102040 years, from our and from the Zorgonians' point of view.
But what do the Scientzorgs think of their trip? Because of distance contraction at very high speeds they only have to travel a fraction of the 100000 ly, more exactly for them, the trip takes about 20000 light years. But what about, if we use after-burners? Increasing our speed to 99.5%? Then the trip would last 10000 years, a unbelievable speed of 99.99998% of the speed of light gives us a trip time of only 63 years from the Scientzorgs' point of view. However, as the speed increases the mass of the space ship for also increases. So, a 1,000 ton space-ship, at 99.99998% of light-speed has a mass of 15 million tons. Which is quite heavy.

Truth is, that now, once I've done that math, a space ship travelling at 99.99998% of the speed of light seems unlikely, however, the point of this article was to show, that a sufficiently advanced civilization, could send scientists to another planet without having them die of old age before they reach their destination.
Still, the Zorgonians on Zorgonia would have to wait 2 * 100,000 years to hear from their Scientzorgs...

NOTE: A quick insight on the math / equations I used to get my results can be found on my blog's helper wiki: http://neduard.wikidot.com/specialrelativity

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

2009-02-16T09:51:00.000-08:00

A simple question that almost all of us are familiar with. But who has actually spent more than a few seconds of thought trying to work out this conundrum. Most will probably get a headache after a few iterations of the chicken-egg cycle and truth be told this is a very interesting concept indeed. I'm going to work specifically on the 'chicken' and 'egg' problem and I'm not going to tackle any of the more philosophical notions like: "If X depends on Y and Y depends on X, X is different from Y and they can not happen simultaneously. Thus, which came first, X or Y?"

I started to think about this during class, I can't remember what was the subject of discussion, but the teacher said "it's like the old chicken and egg question..." to which I replied with a proud tone in my voice: "It was the egg! The egg came first!". My colleagues, hearing this, instinctively adopted the opposite belief. I held a quick argument with them that evening but not much to show for. It was the day after that I elaborated and refined the proof for which the egg came first.

For those of you that are simply searching the internet for a answer to this question my opinion is this: The egg came first. Now for the proof:

Suppose that chickens evolved from reptiles (could have been dinosaurs for all I care) and that the only distinction between a bird and a reptile is the existence of feathers (the proof accepts further differentiation, but for the sake of simplicity let's just use feathers). Now, the reptiles were living happily when a mutation occurred and they started developing feathers. At first, this is called a mutation because the evolving feathers don't provide a sufficient increase in survival chances. So in the course of millions of years there were reptiles with feathers and reptiles without them (i.e. some generations had feathers and others didn't). Now suppose that we define a chicken to be the animal coated with feathers after 1000 consecutive generations of feather-bearing reptiles. We do this in order to eliminate the possibility of mutations: the fact that even then, individuals still have feathers means that they have an increased survival chance compared to their feather-less cousins. Ok, so the 999th egg is laid and a reptile with feathers comes out, that reptile in turn lays the 1000th egg. From that egg a chicken hatches (being the individual that corresponds to our definition). So, basically the first chicken appeared from an egg, and thus the egg was first.

Good, now you might consider our definition: the 1000th member with feathers, the idea is to strictly define the difference between a chicken and a reptile. You can use any definition you like, it's fundamental property is to classify all of the egg-laying animals into two categories: chickens and non-chickens. Once you have that it is easy to rebuild the proof.

So there you go, proof that the egg came before the chicken. I came up with this in the course of an evening, about a week ago. The big surprise came then I searched the internet today and found that I was right: according to evolution, the egg DID in fact come first.

Let's laugh a little

2009-02-09T13:27:00.000-08:00

I just found this site while on #teensonlinux . It was all a coincidence I guess.
http://www.bash.org/?top

First, the too long or too naughty to post here ^_^
Here's _my_ password ********
Buried in sand
How many inches are from a to z?
Don't mess with the admins
YABNV = Yet Another Blood Ninja Victim
You won't get it!
Be careful what you say on IRC or you may end up on bash.org
Curse them typos
There's no justice in the world

next, the clean LOLed ones
<khassaki> HI EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!
<judge-mental> try pressing the the Caps Lock key
<khassaki> O THANKS!!! ITS SO MUCH EASIER TO WRITE NOW!!!!!!!
<judge-mental> fuck me

<i8b4uunderground> d-_-b
<bonynomore> how u make that inverted b?
<bonynomore> wait
<bonynomore> never mind

<reo4k> just type /quit whoever, and it'll quit them from irc
* luckyb1tch has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* r3devl has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* sasopi has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* phhhfft has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* blackersnake has quit IRC (r`heaven)
<iban`reo4k[ex]> that's gotta hurt
<r`heaven> :(

<frank> can you help me install GTA3?
<knightmare> first, shut down all programs you aren't using
frank has quit IRC. (Quit)
<knightmare> ...

* Porter is now known as PorterWITHGIRLFRIENDWHOISHOT
<strayed> he shot his girlfriend?

YAST

2009-01-26T14:09:00.001-08:00

No, I have not started using SUSE. Here, "YAST" stands for Yet Another Scientific Theory :)
Remember my old post regarding LHC? I haven't mentioned it before, but besides being sort of a nerd, I'm also into physics, mainly astronomy and particle physics.

A few days earlier I went to an activity organized at my school at which a university professor presented the accelerator. After the main event, me and two fellow students discussed with him various theories. One of his claims was that the Universe isn't expanding at an accelerated rate and that it might in the distant future stop altogether and start contracting, ultimately undergoing a 'Big Crunch'. After that it would explode and thus our Universe would be cyclical in nature. Of course, I was aware of this theory for a long time and even considered it the most likely one to be true at some point in the past. However, I recently read Stephen Hawking's book, "A Brief History of Time" (published in '88 I believe). In it, professor Hawking was against this cyclical nature of the universe, instead he opted for a Universe that was expanding at an accelerated rate. I'm not going to talk about this hypothesis, only about the 'Big Crunch' scenario version.

The way I see it, even IF the Universe would have enough dark matter to stop the expansion and gradually contract all the way back to a singularity it wouldn't be able to explode again with a Big Bang. This is because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which states that the entropy of a system (and in our case the whole Universe) increases. If this is the case, then at each consequently Big-Bang the entropy is higher and higher. Finally there would be a state in which the entropy would be high enough not to cause a Big Crunch, all the matter in the Universe will be uniformly distributed, thus not allowing for galaxies, planets and life-forms to exist.

If the Universe doesn't undergo these cycles then it means that it must have a cause. Such a cause may be the "colliding Brane" theory, but it seems scientist aren't quite preoccupied with what happened before or what caused the Big Bang. In case you attribute it to quantum mechanics, then what are the conditions for a Big-Bang to occur? A completely-empty region of space it might seem. If there was mater inside the Universe at the moment of the Big-Bang then it might have had a strong impact on the Universe we see today, or the Big-Bang somehow annihilated everything, but if that's the case then another Big-Bang might just happen tomorrow, which seems pretty unlikely. Not to mention that we have to account for the massive amount of energy that's being thrown in, or if you want, you could say that in this model, a Big-Bang doesn't annihilate matter (energy) it simply absorbs it and then goes of. However, this again seems to contradict the 2nd law previously mentioned.

So, it would seem that in order for a Big-Bang to occur, you need a region in space (to be honest I don't know if you can call that space) that has no matter in it. But then, where would the energy come from? In quantum mechanics it is possible for matter to appear out of nowhere, but only on the form of a virtual particle-antiparticle pair. This is at the basis of the Hawking Radiation theory, I'm not going to go through that, my question is how is it possible for such a large amount of matter to be spontaneously created solely on quantum theory. And where all of the antimatter went? Is it because of the broken P symmetry?

So many questions to answer so few answers... it seems that for now at least, all we can do is guess, measure, and do the math, but at the end of the day, we still have to guess which result is correct.

Path to l33thood

2008-11-24T04:36:00.000-08:00

Again, just a random post, I think it's funny considering the examples at GNU/Fun
Here are 3 code snippets, all of them doing almost the same thing (parsing an argument string):

One year ago: http://ubuntu.pastebin.com/f29b96634
A week ago: http://ubuntu.pastebin.com/f2192e38b
and
Yesterday: http://ubuntu.pastebin.com/f1c3c0556

Also, in the first two examples, I use a function, evaluator_info(), that outputs help and version messages. So the code was a little longer because of the help information. In the third example, no such string is needed since 'optparse' automatically creates help messages based on the added options. Great!

I picked a lock.. sort of :D

2008-11-15T11:44:00.000-08:00

Just like the title says, this evening I managed to pick a lock... This probably doesn't have any informational value to you, however since it's a pretty neat achievement, I thought it would be best if I wrote it down here.
Using instructions found on the Internet (starting with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_tumbler_lock), I opened an old pin tumbler lock (an Yale lock). The procedure was simple, I just applied some pressure to the Tumbler, and then drove a needle in and out stroking the pins until the were correctly aligned. I didn't do any text-book lock-picking, meaning that I didn't tried to find out what pin was opposing, and then tried to push it down and then move on to the next one opposing, I pushed the pins randomly. Now you might think that it was a freak occurrence. However, the interesting part is that I managed to open the lock twice. Of course it could have been just luck :)
By the way, in the title I mentioned 'sort of', it's because normally I would have had to apply pressure using a flathead screwdriver, however, since I'm a newb at lock0picking, I cheated a little and pressed directly on the part that goes into the door, in a real lock-picking situation this would be impossible since it implies that the door is opened...
In any case, I didn't knew it was this easy, my next move will probably be to purchase a simpler lock (Yales are used on almost any outside door so they aren't the easiest locks to pick), and try to actually pick it, instead of relying on lady luck.

An affair with Slackware

2008-10-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

Remember the days when I used Debian because Ubuntu was boring? Well you have had to read most of my blog in order to do that, so I'll assume you don't remember and give a little introduction about why I don't think Ubuntu is the distribution for me. Now don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against it and IMO it's one of (if not 'the') best distribution out there. However, it is a bit too "point and click" if you know what I mean. At first, I was happy nice little list of packages in Synaptic, hot fiery effects in Compiz-Fusion, but then I realized that this is not the true GNU/Linux way. You don't learn anything about a particular package by simply running `apt-get install blablabla`. So I went and installed Debian and because I was in search of some nerd-thrills, I didn't installed the GUI. Long story short, although Debian was a great experience I didn't like it's old packages, so I went back to Ubuntu.
A couple of weeks ago, I was on the search for another distro that was easy to install and yet maintained as much as possible of the original GNU/Linux feel (note that although you may thing "Gentoo" here, configuring portage is too much a pain for me. Not to mention the long installation time of applications). Right, so I went forward and tried Slackware, or more precisely Slamd64. It installed, complete with a bundle of useful applications, everything from xchat to kde. I went forward and added my custom kernel, compiled firefox 3 (mind you, it compiled on first try. Now try that on an out-of-the-box Ubuntu :D)

Right, so I've been using slackware for almost three months now and I have to say I'm very impressed with it. I've stopped using KDE and I am now using Enlightenment version 0.16. I have compiled it from source along with its modules. It impresses me through its simplicity and through its power at the same time.

Another interesting feature about Slackware is that it enables you to customize every thing on your computer. Also it teaches you how to do things and how things work in a manner different from Ubuntu: in Slackware you do things manually while in most other desktop distributions you use tools that do the job for you. For example, I now understand a little bit more on how initial ram disk works because I custom compiled my kernel and had to create a initrd image for it. However, because my computer is 64-bit based, compiling and are running 32 bit software is somewhat of a pain. In general, shared libraries work, but in order to compile large projects such as Wine I need to install a lot of 32 bit compatibility libraries. Also flash player 10 doesn't work. That being said, I think I will go back to ubuntu for a while, or at least maybe I'll remove Slackware and try to install a new 32 bit distribution. I should mention that I have tried to do this in the past but either that distribution didn't start up or my hard disk contents couldn't have been read because my partitions are LVM, and somehow LVM partitions that are created on 64 bit machines are not a read by 32 bit ones... or something like that.

LHC - yet another opinion about 'the End of the World'

2008-09-09T02:34:00.000-07:00

I have been kinda busy the last week, which is why I didn't wrote any new posts for my blog. But this LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is going to end the world thingy that I hear and read all over the news is starting to freak me out. DUDES! I don't think that not even 10% of all those who claim that this is the Apocalypse actually know what LHC does. I mean have they ever even read about microblack-holes or Hawking Radiation?
So, putting idiots aside, I believe that the world's not going to end. I'm not going to state all the reasons, because it'll probably be better if I just put the links so you can read about it too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_black_hole, http://thecircuit.mojohd.com/episodes/episode-6/ (the part when professor Michio Kaku talks about LHC is important).
That being said I should mention my own thoughts regarding the experiment. I'm quite excited because if micro-black-holes would be created, it would mean that extra dimensions exist and as prof. Michio Kaku stated, it is possible to bend space (using an extra-dimension) and thus create things like wormholes. Now, I've seen a documentary once, it was called "The Elegant Universe" and in it, things like wormholes were discussed and they said that space could be bent, but it couldn't be ruptured (according to Einstein). I'm not a physicist, so my understanding of these phenomena rather limited.

Intrepid Ibex Alpha 4

2008-09-01T05:33:00.000-07:00

So, guess what? I have Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 4; :yahoo: pretty awesome don't you think?
Well, it is and it isn't at the same time, mostly it isn't. The amount of bugs make using it a pretty nasty experience. That's because, at least in my case, few things work out of the box and you need to use a little good ol' "persuasion".
For example, the first thing I encountered was that system -> about ubuntu didn't work. In nerd terms, yelp can't parse the file /usr/share/gnome/help/about-ubuntu/C/about-ubuntu.xml because of another error in /usr/share/gnome/help/libs/C/legalnotice.xml. Commenting/deleting the problematic part in legalnotice.xml seems to solve the problem.
Next came the strong desire to install the graphics driver. I soon felt sorry for that attempt because after my first try, neither the monitor nor my GeForce 7300GT card weren't detected. Also, it seemed that instead of using the nvidia driver, Intrepid was using vesa. It probably took me 30 minutes in total of installing and reinstalling the 173.14.09 and 173.14.12 drivers before I realized that the problem was caused by a faulty generation of xorg.conf by nvidia-xconfig and managed to get hardware acceleration into my system.
Currently I'm working on the sound driver. I know there is a long history of sound issues, especially for me, since I have 2 sound cards (one onboard, and one usb). On hardy a simple asoundconf set-default-card solved it, but on intrepid, asoundconf fails with "ValueError: need more than 1 value to unpack" on line 348. So yeah, I do have some work to do before I get it to work. The reason I started using it, is because I'm looking forward to start participating in it's development and reporting bugs I think is a good way to start.

offtopic: today is the first day of Ubuntu Developer Week. It's also the first time I'm going to participate, so I'm excited to see how is it going to be.

2008-08-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

Revolution OS: A documentary about Linux, GNU/Linux and it's evolution. Very inspiring and also educative IMO.
Enjoy

GRUB 2

2008-08-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

The GRand Unified Boot-loader 2. A pretty fancy name wouldn't you say? Well here's the thing, in case you haven't tried it yet, I definitely recommend it. Although at first glance it may not seem too different from GRUB 1, the main advantage IMO comes in the form of Logical Volume Management (LVM) support. That comes in handy for example if your like me and want to try stuff out: new kernels, new distributions, new setups, etc.

Now before I continue my blabbering about how great can a Logical Volume(LV) boot partition be, I should explain what is LVM in the first place. To put it simply it is a method which allows you to change your partition's size (shrink/grow) on-the-fly and without worrying about creating gaps between the partitions on the hdd. Of course, if would be too much for my fragile fingers to write about, so I would suggest you google LVM up: the first 3-4 results should be of interest.

OK, now that you (presumably) know what LVM is, I would recommend you visit http://agemo.wikidot.com/tutorial:lvmboot . I'm using wikidot.com to host my tutorials simply because it is more efficient to write them there, where there is adequate support for that type of writing stile, as opposed to writing them here on blogspot, where they will just fill up space and won't be very pretty-looking.

Me is back

2008-08-25T10:58:00.001-07:00

Well all I can say is a "hello world" world to everybody. Summer vacation is almost over so I'm starting to get back in business...
The great thing is that I'm now using KBlogger, an excellent application for writing articles and posting them to blogspot.com. Enough commercials and enough greetings. In order to mark the occasion, I'm going to post the first how-to on this blog. Pretty sweet if you ask me.
Here is How to install Ubuntu on an USB: http://neduard.wikidot.com/howto:usbubuntu
Currently it is in alpha stage, or something similar, however if you are interested in caring your personal system with you everywhere you go and not having to carry a cumbersome laptop, then you should definitely have a look at it.
In it I talk about what you should do if you want to have a working Ubuntu system that is installed on you pen-drive instead of you hard-drive.

Debian 4.0 + framebuffer = ...

2008-05-16T03:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I managed to install the framebuffer on Debian, and now the console looks much much more sweeter.
In case you're trying to do the same thing as me, I'll give you some instructions on how to accomplish this:
Basicaly, you have to compile your kernel to support framebuffering, I compiled my driver within the kernel, however, I want to make it run as a module as soon as posibile. The options that you have to include are:

FB: Device Drivers -> Graphics Support ==> Support for framebuffer devices
VESAFB: Device Drivers -> Graphics Support -> Support for framebuffer devices ==> VESA VGA Graphics support
FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE: Device Drivers -> Graphics Support ==> Console display driver support (also select the VGA 8x8 and 8x16 fonts)

I would also like to mention that I spent a couple of days working out the fb so I don't know exactly what need no be done. I will post the complete instructions after I reinstall the sistem from scratch (I do this for the purpose of seeing exactly what needs to be done). The `userspace vesa vga support' was quite troublesome, so I left it out of the final make (I think that was the cause of the framebuffer failing).

LE (20th May) Well, even though there are 3 weeks until the summer vacation, it seems like ages away. Unfortunately, I had to revert to Hardy and postpone my Debian CLI adventure.

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

2008-05-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody, I've installed Ubuntu 8.04 last night and now I'm writing this post from w3m (just in case you haven't heard of it, it is a fully functional, text-based browser). You're probably thinking "wow, he installed hardy heron and now he's got video-driver issues", or "I knew 8.04 wasn't stable, guess this guy didn't".
The truth is, I have my GnomeDE running the gnome-terminal from which I'm writing, so.. no, I didn't crashed my system, or at least not my nvidia driver, the graphics work fine. But then, why am I using w3m and not Firefox? Again, you may thing "FF3.05b is rubbish, 2.0.0.11 was better" and again I say, no, that is not correct. FF3.05b works fine, almost. It has a small glitch regarding sound in flash and some nspluginwrapper crashes (although, I've gotten used to those by now).
So.. why am I using w3m anyway? It is because I want to install Debian, not only that, I want to go minimal, that means no windows (as in little boxes that appear on your screen, which can be moved, resized and most importantly are made of jelly (thanks to compizfusion of course)), no buggy Y! protocols that fail when trying to send a 1KB file, or that have problems even when trying to send an avatar to Y!'s servers, no icon lying on the desktop that is entitled "Dofus" (Dofus is a MMORPG, and I started playing it about 2-3 weeks ago, but because I'm f2p (free to play), I can't advance in level, so, until I buy a premium account, I'll have to stick with a lower level (which of course, sucks)) and 100% pure Linux thrills.

OK, enough introduction.
My first impression on Hardy was "hmm they did a nice job on this one", and I was actually surprised when Flash and more importantly Java worked on Firefox 3, right -out-of-the-box-. I think I got java to work on 7.10 but only once. I never succeeded in doing that again, guess I'm not out of the noob status yet. Next, some of the stand-out features were:
- the tracker (even though I stopped it back in 7.10)
- new burning software: Brasero. It's quite simple and clean, plus it supports multi-sessioning. I haven't tried to see if I can burn files larger that 4GB
- Firefox of course, with all nspluginwrapper and java working right out of the box. My only problem is sound in flash (although I think this problem has deeper roots). In terms of memory... so, so. With no tabs open it consumes about 23MB, the problem is, that as soon as I play 2 videos on youtube (5 minutes in total), the memory usage cilmbs to 58MB.
- 3d windows in compizfusion
- and a new little program called Hardware test (hwtest-gtk)

The only issue I have so far is the sound not working properly, Rhythmbox works, while Skype doesn't...
Oh, I didn't mention but I have upgraded to Ubuntu Hardy Heron from my previous Fiesty Fawn. This wasn't a clean install, that would have hopefully gone without problems.

In any case, I'm now backing up my system and tomorrow, as I've said, I will install Debian Etch with no X and enjoy the pure Linux experience.

Bux.to is fake

2008-05-10T04:30:00.000-07:00

Just as the title suggests, the PTC (paid to click) site, bux.to is a SCAM. I just hope this post is listed by google, so that people will know not to fall for this 'get ritch slow' fraud. I came to this conclusion after wating for 2 months for my money in vain. You can read in my previous post about bux.to so I'm not going to repeat myself. It is true that they managed to trick me, but that was also due to the way the actualy work:

Let's say you're a guy who has a site and wants to promote it because you don't have too much money, you choose bux.to as your advertiser insead of someone serious like google with adsense. In any case, you choose to give bux.to 19.10$ per 1000 member visits. If you do the math, you will start to get suspicious... That is because, 1910cents / 1000 members equals 1.91 cents per member, at a first glance it might seem ok, considering bux.to pays 1 cent per click for nonpremium members and 1.25 for premium ones. However, what happens when a reffered person clicks? let's say they are all non-premium (this is because bux.to pays them less). If a person who is reffered to another one clicks and ad, then it will recieve 1 cent and the refferer an aditional cent. That means that for each reffered click bux.to actualy pays 2 cents. Well how on earth can you pay 2 cents if you only have 1.91. That means that either alot of people are unreffered, however this doesn't result from the forum posting in which people talk about buying 100 refferal packs.
Now you may say that even though there are people who buy 100/500 refferal packs, there a few, and that there are a lot more persons who find out about this site on the net, and are unreffered. Ok, you're wright, that isn't a strong argument against bux.to, but consider this: why is bux.to encourageing *so much* reffering when it reality it actualy causes losses, what's does bux.to gain if it's users have many refferals? And it pays 2 cents to nonpremium members, but for premium ones it pays 2.5, sure the increase doesn't seem too big, but in reality is 25% more and consider that you have 100 premium members, reffered to another premium one, that's 59$ (2.5 cents payied per click - 1.91 budget per click) that bux.to has to pay from... from where actualy?
The answer is not from the money that is being paid for refferals, because the usualy turn out profits after a couple of weeks (ok, let's not be greedy and say months). Still, after a month those refferals will start generating losses so more money will have to be fed to bux.to. You might think that many people after a number of click stop. Trust me, that is only temporary. Suppose you get your money, are you going to keep it a secret? No, of course not! You're probably going to tell every body that bux.to is real and that it pays, and they will start clicking again.

Speaking of getting your money, the thing that led me to believe that bux.to was real was the clams of various people that said that it actualy paied (don't think I haven't searched for 'bux.to scam' or 'bux.to fake', but in spite of some claims of people not getting their money, there were others that said "it was the real deal"). I found out later that this is a tipical strategy: pay some, and those people will advertise you. Then, when someone sees their claim, they will tend to ignore all of the other evidence (this is a psihological thing, because actualy, you WANT for bux.to to be real, and you will look for any evidence supporting that claim, and ignore the rest).

I hope I haven't bored you, because as I'm writing this, I'm really starting to fall asleep so I hope you find this more interesting that me at this time.
Continuing with more suspitious things about bux.to, consider the lack of ads, around 15 per day and most of which are ACTUALY FROM THE SITE ITSELF. This is very peculiar, because even though bux.to has some losses as seen in my previous paragraphs, it pays you to view ads, but doesn't recieve any money for them, unless people who post on the forums saing "wow, I just got my 5123$ thank you so much bux.to", which I doubt. Speaking of forums, I don't know if you surfed them... there is a dedicated section for success stories, now I don't see that in serious buisnesses, like rentacoder or adsense. It's like a cheap comercial (you see some guy saying that he uses the shampoo for 10 years and has never got a speck of dandroff, when actualy he was taken of the streets (to keep the average-citizen look) and paied 5 bucks to say that). Also regarding the forums, if you haven't been cursed on a forum, try to post something like
title: I haven't got paied
contents: I have been waiting for 2 months for my money and I haven't recieved them yet
a moderator will suggest you get a ticket and send your complaint to the contact department.
after some time, post will apear with people saying that you are a !@#$ and a !@#$%^ because you haven't done that already, and that "bux.to is the best ^-^"
you might think that the complainer is me, no, I haven't posted on the forums, but I've seen how other people are humiliated if they do that.

Woha.. I wrote alot tonight, and I'm getting tired so I guess I'll end this article.
There are other things that should make you suspicious about bux.to, but in any case, if you decide you might get somehow lucky (although unlikeable), all I can say is DON'T give them your money, because you will regret it.

That was all folks, hope you enjoyed the article (or at least is wansn't too boring).

Anime

2008-04-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

I always liked cartoon when I was little. Nowadays either I don't have time or I don't have anything cool to look at. No offense, but I don't like any of the shows that are aired on CN, I guess I''ve gotten used to The Justice League, Batman of the Future, Dexter (the old episodes), Tom & Jerry and so on. I know that what CN Romania broadcasts is different from what is being broadcasted in the US so the shows may still be aired there. In any case, even if I see an episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog, It will probably be one that I have seen 100 times and even If I like CCD, I'll change the channel because I'm bored (not to mention that new episodes of these shows are rare, but not inexistent. I don't get why CN Romania doesn't broadcast them more often).

Ok, that being said about CN, I should focus my attention on the subject that this post is about, and namely animes. I started with Dragon Ball Z a year ago, but unfortunately after the first 200 or so episodes, things kind of get predictable, also the thing that bothered me was Goku's continuous evolution, becoming stronger and stronger until the producers just couldn't give him more special powers. Sure he was probably 1000 times faster the speed of light, he could have destroyed the whole galaxy if he wanted and managed to be as agile as a cat overdosed on RedBull while carrying 1000Kg weight on each of his hands and feet, but there were no great leaps such as when he learned to fly as a child or when he almost defeated Tien in the Tournament of Martial Arts also back when he was a kid. Furthermore, the sagas tended to follow a pattern:
He goes someplace, all is nice and fun;

A few hints that something bad is about to happen occur;
Then a little situation turn when a bad guy is revealed but not the boss;
After heroically defeating the bad guy, Goku (or the main character in that saga) starts to battle the boss (such as Vegeta, Frieza, Cell, Buu, ...)
The boss is at first stronger that the main character but then he becomes weak in comparison either because the main character receives help or because the somehow power-ups
The boss seems to be defeated, but then reappears stronger
The final blow is usually not delivered by the main character (Vegeta, Cell)
The next saga begins and the cycle starts again...

After DBZ, I started watching Kiddy Grade and Full Metal Panic, they were both pretty cool and also opened the door to anime watching. Next came Naruto
Naruto was probably the best anime until then, imo it exceeded DBZ it had it all, action it was funny, the adventures were different and didn't follow the saga pattern saw on DBZ unfortunately, I stopped watching after the 110th episode or so (the time when Naruto has to save a guy that was participating in a race for his village; that guy was also the smaller brother of the first tester Naruto faced at the exams, the one with scars on his scalp and which tested the information-gathering abilities of the students). The fact that I was watching 4-5 episodes per day lowered my appetite, so here a note to remember: if you have 100 episodes from a show, don't watch them in 3 weeks, you'll get tired; even though it's hard not to watch 3-4 per day, try to restrain yourself, you will be more curious to find out what happens in the next episode if you watch one per day.

Currently I'm viewing DeathNote and.. what can I say, it is not bad; I like it due to the psychological battle between Light and L. it's like watching 2 chess champions battle: you see how good the move was only after it has been made, until that you're thinking of completely different strategies, but once one of the players makes a move you suddenly realize that that was the best one.

Internet money making

2008-04-01T12:52:00.000-07:00

Today I made 22$ from rentacoder.com
I have worked on two projects, on one I needed to translate some articles, and on another, I needed to post some blog comments.
The problem is that I didn't complete the second project, the buyer did however payed me for the little work that I have done. I feel very ashamed for disappointing him and from now on, I'll be more careful on bidding.
I'm also registered at bux.to, although some say It might be a scam. I haven't received my money yet so it's hard to say anything about that PTC (Payed To Click) site.

On a side note about bux.to, in case you want to try it out here's the link: http://bux.to/?r=drohgan if you register via this link you will be referred to me. You can find more details about this and other stuff like payment on site.

Just to let you know, in case bux.to proves to be a scam (meaning I don't get my money), I will definitively post here and at the same time, I'll probably start a "war" spreading the word about buxey :)
I don't get upset easily, but I HATE IT when people lie and not just to me...

3rd April:
Ok, cool I have 22$ on my rentacoder account but there is one tiny problem: I have no way of withdrawing them!!
I made a paypal account but I doesn't accept my credit card, even though it can presumably be used in foreign countries.

18th April:
Update on "Internet money making", I requested a credit card this week and it should arrive in 5-6 days from now. I just hope I will be able to register it at paypal.
I haven't been active on bux.to for quite some time now. I've earned 27.29$ on that site, but I'm going to wait until my payment arrives (I issued the request on March 6th, so it will take another 18 days or so until the 2 month waiting period expires). Even though there are reports of people being paid, I'm more and more suspicious...

Counter-Strike

2008-03-07T08:47:00.000-08:00

I'm probably you're average CS player. I don't play to often, usually I go against my school mates after school, in matches hosted on my server. Yup, that's right I have a dedicated cs-server running on Linux, now isn't that cool?
Because posting tutorials on this blog will take up too much space, I'm going to use another site, a wiki: agemo.wikidot.com
Problem is that I have very little spare time, most of which is consumed by studying and programming, so I'll probably do the work in the summer vacation

A couple of words about Linux

2008-03-07T08:39:00.000-08:00

If you are tired of your Windows crashing, stalling, consuming resources, being infected by spy-ware, viruses. Or if you are a person that has a low budget and doesn't have the money to buy, say MS Office or even a new Windows operating system, then you can try to use a much better alternative: Linux.
I'm not going to state all of the advantages and disadvantages of this os (operating system), you can find them by googleing "Linux advantages" and "Linux disadvantages".
You don't need to be a geek to learn it, all you need is a bit of patience and the will to ask, because there are a lot of people that will be happy to help and assist you (including me).
It's really worth it, I have been working on Linux for over a year now and I can proudly say that there is no need for me to go back to Windows.

Hello world

2008-03-05T14:34:00.001-08:00

This is my first post on my first real blog. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't generally use blogs, hi5, orkut or stuff like that. I simply don't understand their use. I am starting this blog however, in order to keep me active and also to help others in various problems. Most of them regarding computers.
I am a Linux user, and I want to be part of a growing community. I will publish thus different tutorials and tips on how to get your Linux machine working.