LUX.ET.UMBRA

The windows are open as I swelter in the eighty plus degree heat. As I wait for my work computer to finish processing its trend data, I hear a woman’s voice outside:
Woman: “ARGH!”
Woman: “What the hell is the matter with you?!”
Child: *begins to cry*
I peek out the window to see a mother drag the child indoors as the door slams shut. Before she made her exclamation, I thought I heard something like a child tripping or falling or some sort of accident type within their minivan. It wasn’t anything huge, and the child seemed relatively happy from what I could discern.
What’s scary about it all is that those children are good kids. The oldest sings happily a lot, and takes care of her younger brother a lot. Definitely too young to do so, but she happily does it and her brother tries to imitate her by also singing. There’s a little baby, but it takes after its siblings, then it’ll be good-natured too.
What I wonder about is the woman. She gets annoyed with her children, it seems, but yet has a third? And her children aren’t even hellions! Sometimes you really wonder about some parents.

Tags: Personal by darkmoon
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Now this is a nice technology. Solar power has always been a hassle since its required to have huge panels to gather the sunlight. SolarCentury has come out with tiles that you can tile your roof just like regular roof tiling. Each of the tiles gathers solar energy and generates both electricity and heat from the energy. Pretty nice innovation since it sits flush with your roof and thereby doesn’t look terribly ugly and still functional.
Via TreeHugger

Tags: Technology by darkmoon
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This is humorous. Mr. Brown – a blogger from Singapore and grade-A humorist has come out with his article, I am a Gadget Slut. An excerpt:

Perhaps one day, they will build a gadget that will do everything for me. I can imagine a product — let’s call it The Zeus Tech 3000 — that becomes my do-it-all (or bao ka liao in Hokkien), device. That way, I need never buy another gadget again, because the Zeus 3000 will always meet my needs. The Zeus Tech 3000 can play music, videos, and make coffee. And those are just the basic features.

Laugh all you want, but today’s society creates a little gadget sluts in all of us. So break out your cell phones, PDAs, laptops and head over to read his latest article on why he loves his toys.
MrBrown < TODAYOnline

Tags: Gadgets by darkmoon
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In case you haven’t heard yet, there is a free Xbox Live Gold weekend starting 3/31 to 4/2. This is sponsored by Verizon and there are numerous events:

Top Weekend Events
Speaking of things you don’t want to miss, here are just a few of the hot weekend events headed your way:

• Beat Ubisoft: You’ve got two opportunities to take on the Ubi-dudes who brought you Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. Own them and you could win some Ubi-schwag. Get the details…
  
• Game with Fame: The Roots. Play NBA 2K6 with Kamal from the Roots on Friday, March 31 starting at 3:00 pm Eastern/noon Pacific. Look for the gamertag: RootsGWF.
  
• Lucky 7 Play & Win: You could win simply for playing! Play a total of at least seven hours over the weekend to be entered into a drawing for sweet Xbox Live gear. Find out more.
  
• Frag Doll Friday: Take on Ubisoft’s fierce gaming crew on Sunday, April 2, starting at 6 P.M. Eastern (3 P.M. Pacific) in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighterâ„¢. Get the details.
  
• Beat the Xbox® Team: Challenge Xbox insiders to College Hoops® 2K6, Marble Blast Ultra, and EA SPORTSâ„¢ Fight Night Round 3. Earn bragging rights and win awesome Xbox prizes!

So if you have nothing better to do than to sit at home and play Xbox all day, then have at it with our blessings.
Via Xbox

Tags: Games by darkmoon
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Yes, that IT guy could be looking over your shoulder everytime you write to grandma from work, laughing all the way to the bank about the time you forgot to lift the toilet seat when you were five. But now you can let someone else be his network stalker victim as you learn the ways of the elite security.
Yes, we are speaking of SSH tunneling and how to do it through firewalls and all sorts of other networks. The boys over at Engadget have a very thorough writeup on how it is performed. We would suggest reading it.
There are some other tools you can partake in, but this is the nuts and bolts of it all. So enjoy, and rejoice in the fact that you are no longer the IT guy’s pansy.
Via Engadget

Tags: Internet, Security, Tips and Tricks by darkmoon
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Putty is a Windows program that allows you to telnet and ssh. Pretty much one of the best open-source items out there for ssh. PortaPutty takes it one step further and is hacked to be used off of a USB drive. So you can take it with you, and not be afraid that someone’s stupid machine doesn’t allow you to install your favorite SSH client.
Jealous? You should be. But you too can be Im-porta-nt, with PortaPutty!
Via SocialistSushi

Tags: Open Source, Tips and Tricks, Windows by darkmoon
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FeedoStyle is a service that allows you to add any sort of RSS feed into a scrolling ticker format. Go figure that this was mentioned not too long ago at a local blogger meetup here also. In any case, this service allows you to scroll a feed, select a design and go nuts with the scrolling.
And seeing how it’s a service, no programming required. Well, perhaps a bit of template editing. Now you too can have movement that will get annoying after five seconds on your site!
Don’t say we didn’t warn ya. But still a neat service nonetheless.
LifeHacker < FeedoStyle

Tags: Blogging, Tips and Tricks by darkmoon
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Amusing. Jerry Taylor, city manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma, has asked The Register to stop their readers from emailing him about this incident. My dear fellow. You are a public servant. Public servants have public emails. While you are definitely at liberty not to respond to all of your emails, the only thing you can do is to either:

1. filter your email
   
2. don’t use email
   
3. delete all your email
   
4. don’t read your email

Otherwise, join the rest of the Internet era and face spam with the best of them. And if you don’t like it, maybe there’s something within that twenty-two years of experience that will teach you how to control your network instead of acting like a typical manager.
Another note while the LUX staff is at it:

I asked for the strange website to be removed because it blocked my City web site and I could not post public information. I only got help after threatening to contact the FBI.

Alas, you have such a short-term memory. If you would check the transcript it is posted as the first response by Johnny Hughes (CentOS developer):

Please contact someone who does IT for you and show them the page so
that they can configure your apache webserver correctly.

We suppose selective memory is a qualification of being a city manager in Oklahoma. But that’s okay, we won’t tell.
Via TheRegister

Tags: Internet, Society by darkmoon
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The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) is investigating if China-based Lenovo is bugging the PCs via software or hardware after the State Department purchased upwards of 15,000 computers from them.
Another WASTE OF AMERICAN TAX MONEY. We can’t believe how moronic some people are when it comes to intel gathering. Why? Here’s the proof. The top FIVE OEM manufacturers in the world for laptops and computers all are designated in Asia and have been for the past decade. Legend (now Lenovo) has always had a brilliant reputation and participates in the computing world as a well-established firm. Taiwan holds most of the positions of the OEM manufacturing but they’re not under investigation due to being “American-friendly”. Why haven’t there been investigations in the past? Obviously nothing in the computing manufacturing world has changed much if at all.
Let’s make one thing clear. Intel gathering and espionage knows no borders. Lenovo is welcoming the investigation saying they have nothing to hide. And rightly so. Not to mention, if anyone was going to do intel gathering, they’d probably be working on this instead.
BoingBoing < BBC

Tags: Government by darkmoon
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Interesting piece that explains DNS (domain name system) in great detail and shows the hierarchy in which to set up a DNS server. This doesn’t quite give the actual commands but gives you a detailed look at how DNS functions and how to set up your own DNS server to work within the great inner-clockwork of the Internet.
Via HttProxy

Tags: Internet, Tips and Tricks by darkmoon
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