Wikipeida

Wikipedia is no longer the website it used to be in 2006, whe I first placed it here. Rest in peace.

Encryption

Encrypt everything...

This is about you, your well being, your privacy. But this is also not about you; it is about your friends and their privacy.

I encrypt everything I can. My data lives in encrypted containrs under the Linux block-device encryption infrastucture and framework. There is not a single drive/partition with anything meaningful in it that is not encrypted.

For encrypted communications, use a "one-time pad" that is communicated in person. If that is not possible, at the very least make it expensive for any interested entity to get to your data and use symmetric key encryption, like PGP (or GPG). This seems to be holding up to about $1M or more per person's data. Here is my PGP/GPG public key:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.15 (GNU/Linux)

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-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Amiga

Because true love never dies.

Slackware Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution, and it is my Linux distribution of choice. Read about the various linux distributions, and you will find that Slackware tries to be flexible and "user-friendly" without diverting from a standardized unix behaviour and configuration. It works for me, not without a bit of pain at times, but I feel far more comfortable using my machine after having taken a short configuration "bus tour" than after having had some automatic configuration utility do it for me.

Slackware's creator (Patrick Volkerding) has, after all, graduated from the same university system as I did, so how can I go wrong with that!

OpenGL is a definition and specification of an API... Yes, this sounds very dry and abstract, but that is exactly what it is! OpenGL is a standard for generating (mostly but not solely 3D) graphics with a computer. Most of the 3D applications that promise "fast" or "high-performance" graphics are based on something like OpenGL. The beauty of this "specification" is that it can be implimented on hardware; by hardware I mean any graphics adapter that is capable of generating graphics and not just display them. Most of the 3D games that are in the market today use either OpenGL or DirectX/Direct3D (a standard developed for a particular but very popular operating system).

Typically, the OpenGL API allows the programmer to perform a set of operations on a set (or multiple sets) of data that has been piped to the hardware. The API talks (almost) directly to the hardware, and therefore much of the 3D graphics generation is relieved from the computer's CPU and is done very efficiently on the "GPU." GPUs can be very expensive, and since they are dedicated hardware, they are very good and very fast in what they do. However, the programmer is still the one who runs the show...

Why should people develop software for OpenGL? The answer is simple, in my opinion: the application is (a) more portable, and (b) since it relies on a strict set of standards, it is very likely to perform exactly as expected.

Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and National Pablic Radio (NPR) is no longer what it used to be. Consider its integrity compromised.

Message Passing Interface (MPI) is quite simply one of the best things that happened to the world of computing in the last 20 years. I have to admit that there are some things that I would like to see added to MPI, but for the most part, it works excellently for me! To be successful in developing parallel codes with MPI, you must be able to think like the processor. Be agressive in your thinking... I mean, if a processor wants to do something, that procesor will do it, and other processors will have to respect that. But remember that the weight is on you, the developer, to make sure that "the orchestra" is playing the same piece.

AudiWorld/QuattroWorld B5 S4/RS4 Forum I consider as the most comprehensive resources for the vehicle's enthusiast and fanatic base. The information that can be found on this forum covers absolutely everything one needs to know about the car. Sometimes the information is not easy to search and find, but it is there. And whatever is not there, a simple question will bring it to the surface. If you are curious about something, somebody on this forum has already gone after it and has done the research for you. There is also a good sense of sarcasm that reflects the irony and conflict that characterizes the true fanatic of the B5 line of S-cars. I admit to all counts of narcissism the forum's members take pride in admitting.

MNoooo (MNaudi.com) It is the best Audi vehicle resource in Minnesota and the surrounding states. It is a place of information, events and fun.