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06 sep 06 "What's the low-down on the aforementioned stuffed turtle?" i'm glad that last entry (essay? answer? response? what?) generated enough interest to motivate someone to ask a question -- i was worried that it was a really dull chunk of text. the one before it is even worse. i did some IP investigation for that response, a lot of which turned out to be incompetent; for example, i thought (this is a good one) "ks" stood for "kansas sity". turns out i did properly identify the person, but it was partly luck, because he lives in arkansas, and not missouri, as i erroneously asserted. furthermore, he got that whole "fat and sassy" bit from a character's totally-meaningless line in a cartoon. the whole incident was just dumb and embarrassing, and i thought i'd block it out of my mind and readers' eyes by putting a floating transparent scribble-gif over that part of the essay, but that looks stupid, now that i look at it. 0000108.html is a black stain on my consciousness. i'd wipe it out entirely, but that'd be against the rules. from "is a tortoise an amphibian?": i also have a stuffed turtle that has been with me since i was 16. two events were notable in its life: 1) he was orignially a gift to my ex, who in some argument gave him back. 2) katy (dog) chewed up his head, which i put back together with some fabric glue. other than that, he's pretty much stayed on my bed for 16 years. if i ever get married and/or acquire a bed-sharer, i wonder if he'll be banished. under certain circumstances (weather conditions), i might be in good "asshole geek" form, and only give you an "rtfm" ("read the fucking manual"). but, 1) i'm in the mood for writing something, and 2) i remember how annoying hearing "rtfm" is, and how it used to set me off on posted tirades about how this was a sentiment born out of asshole-ish, elitist glee, and reflected laziness and inabilty to explain as well as "information hoarding" tendencies that are totally opposed to the open source philosophy, computing in general, education, and a generally pleasant and good universe. i went on to state that "tfm" means "all documentation ever written". if you ask which document you're supposed to read, you get more "rtfm". generally, the idea is that you're supposed to plough through unix `man pages`, which are for the most part useless, incomprehensible garbage. i was once trying to get the `vacation` program to work on SDF (this thing that i'm on), and tried to be a conscientious, responsible user and read about it myself instead of posting on the bbs and asking some of the hopelessly unix brain-damaged how to work it. i found, interestingly, that the man page didn't actually tell me how to use the program. it reminded me very much of my first math teacher, who would go into quasi-philosophical detail about the general idea behind a problem, instead of going through a step-by-step example of how, actually, to solve it. sort of baffling, in a way. anyway, this `man page` on the `vacation program` is similar. allow me to reprint it:
NAME
vacation - return ``I am not here'' indication
SYNOPSIS
vacation -i [-r interval] [-t A|D]
vacation [-a alias] [-t A|D] login
DESCRIPTION
vacation returns a message to the sender of a message telling them that
you are currently not reading your mail. The intended use is in a
.forward file. For example, your .forward file might have:
\eric, "|/usr/bin/vacation -a allman eric"
which would send messages to you (assuming your login name was eric) and
reply to any messages for ``eric'' or ``allman''.
Available options:
-a alias
Handle messages for alias in the same manner as those received
for the user's login name.
-i Initialize the vacation database files. It should be used before
you modify your .forward file.
-r Set the reply interval to interval days. The default is one
week. An interval of ``0'' means that a reply is sent to each
message, and an interval of ``infinite'' (actually, any non-
numeric character) will never send more than one reply. It
should be noted that intervals of ``0'' are quite dangerous, as
it allows mailers to get into ``I am on vacation'' loops.
-t A|D Make vacation look in addition to Apparently-To: (A) or Deliv-
ered-To: (D) headers to determine the To: field.
No message will be sent unless login (or an alias supplied using the -a
option) is part of either the ``To:'' or ``Cc:'' headers of the mail. No
messages from ``???-REQUEST'', ``Postmaster'', ``UUCP'', ``MAILER'', or
``MAILER-DAEMON'' will be replied to (where these strings are case insen-
sitive) nor is a notification sent if a ``Precedence: bulk''
``Precedence: list'' or ``Precedence: junk'' line is included in the mail
headers. The people who have sent you messages are maintained as a db(3)
database in the file .vacation.db in your home directory.
vacation expects a file .vacation.msg, in your home directory, containing
a message to be sent back to each sender. It should be an entire message
(including headers). For example, it might contain:
From: eric@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Allman)
Subject: I am on vacation
Delivered-By-The-Graces-Of: The Vacation program
Precedence: bulk
I am on vacation until July 22. If you have something urgent,
please contact Keith Bostic
not exactly user-friendly. on gmail, you just check the "respond with a vacation message" box, and then in the text-field, you write your vacation message. speaking of crapnix, i just wiped out an old copy of windows (one that had been nailed by "genuine advantage" and was becoming increasingly broken) and installed ubuntu. the "package" system takes a lot of getting used to -- you can't simply download a program from the web and "install" it by double-clicking on it, or just double-clicking on it to run it (all hail macintosh -- "the file is the program"). instead, you have an odd system where a package manager updates and installs programs for you, programs it finds listed on a database somewhere. if you want some relatively esoteric program that's not mentioned on the (i think there's just one) database, then apparently getting it to work involves a lot of pain and suffering. but anyway, yeah -- i can't say much about my stuffed turtle that wasn't said in that other entry. but i'm glad to reprint it for you, because the pickings are so meager these days, not that i could ever afford to be choosy. and also, someone who submits a question that doesn't get answered might smirk and think "haha, he didn't know the answer", "haha, this bothered him so much he won't answer" or only "haha, he's losing his resolve, like a typical blogger". this will not do. so, my ego forces me to answer every question received. i replaced my ugly scribbling on "are you feeling fat and sassy?" with a nice X, and i feel better about it. although more acceptable, it's still mildly unpleasant. i just won't think about it there, marring the server with its ugliness. i'm really dumb sometimes, no joke. as my mom likes to say about herself, "i have holes in my brain" -- i have some areas of neurological competence, and some areas of total neurological dysfunction that border on retardation. this is true of anyone, but more true of me than it is for most. i've never been able to take the middle path, and my own physiology reflects this. i'll take this opportunity to trash linux some more, because i came upon this unfinished answer on my mac after giving up for the third time on trying to get comfortable with ubuntu over there, to my left, which sits on my desk, mocking me. apparently filezilla (ftp) is a windows-only open source program! amazing -- i'd have thought any open source program would be released for linux first. but, i guess not -- maybe the community of open-source programmers is finally realizing that no-one in their right mind uses linux, and is focusing on windows development. but even if it were available, it would have been moot, because i'd never have been able to "install" it. the package system is enough on its own to discourage me from using linux. i'm sorry, but i can't find mplayer on the package list. i even looked up the proper install gibberish to type on the command line, and after trying it the terminal told me that it couldn't find mplayer (by accounts a quite well-known program, that should obviously be on the package database). well, so be it. of course the reason i wanted mplayer on linux was so i could look at porn, something that was the deal-breaker last time i tried to use ubuntu. and the reason i needed mplayer as opposed to the included media player is that the normal media filetypes (.mpg, .wmv, .mov, etc) aren't supported by the default ubuntu player (totem movie player, i believe). it only plays some esoteric "Free" format, and then linux users get self-righteous and talk about Freedom when you complain that totem, for all intents and purposes, doesn't work. i need a decent ftp program. i can learn to live without the porn, but ftp is essential to my computing. i might search the packages again for something else -- i guess i don't need to use filezilla, particularly. i tried to use the command line ftp, but failed. i suppose i need to rtfm (i pulled a "stfm", or "skim the fucking manual"), but i wish this stuff were more intuitive. i assume writing about relatively technical garbage is ok, since some of my readers (or a single reader, at least), come from SDF. i got that one question in the mail, "why did you say you were going to leave SDF, but really didn't?", so i don't feel too bad about talking about computer junk once and a while. also, it's educational (read: boring) for the rest of you! i can learn to use gimp (attempted photoshop clone) -- that's no problem. i don't need a wysiwyg html editor -- i have a browser and text editor, along with the presence of the "reload" and "save" commands, respectively. but obviously i must have some way of putting files on a server, and i'd like to have some way of watching porno movies. i haven't tried plugging my digital camera into my linux box (never thought i'd use those words), because i'm afraid the thing is going to catch fire or something. i could install `audacity` (sound recording) package, but i don't think it'd work, based on past experience. actually, i managed to find something called `kmplayer` on the package list, and installed it. but, it's not there, even though the package manager thinks it is. it also tells me it needs some core files to work, and to go to the mplayer website to get them. i go to the mplayer website, and i don't see anything -- just the usual linux gibberish. perhaps this is the key. i once heard "unix users are always readers". well, screw you guys, i'm going home (apologies to t. parker and m. stone). linux/bsd/whatever other god-awful shit is out there, is all fine and good for technically-oriented hobbyists, but if you want a functional computer it's best to go with mac or windows, and preferably mac (even though i hear that design programs like photoshop aren't native to the new intel macs, "yet", i assume). i've become something of a mac zealot, even though i'm not running mac os x. you know their tagline, right? "computers that just work". they have a hedge up on windows, and certainly on linux (barf), in that department. i'm sure i'd sing a different tune if i had been "raised" on linux, though -- i suffer from windows and mac brain damage. but it seems to me that the system of downloading programs from the web and using them is preferable to the package system, which doesn't appear to work, and relies on some external information. when 2000/xp came out and windows became a decent operating system, the linux camp no longer had any practical arguments for using their tangle of wires, and had to revert to revolutionary idealism: "it's Free!", as in "free the people", or only "it's free!", as in "it doesn't cost any money", even though there was a slashdot article not too long ago on how computers with windows pre-installed are actually cheaper than those with a blanked-out hard drive, let alone those with a pre-installed linux. "windows genuine advantage" is going to help spread linux, though -- it helped steer me away from windows, at least until i re-discovered the joys of ubuntu. linux has cleaned up its act some with supposedly friendly, cosmetically-polished distributions like ubuntu, but lurking not far at all beneath the shiny hood is an incomprehensible mass of engine parts. furthermore, you really do have to get in there and get your hands dirty if you want to do anything (such as install programs, apparently). it used to be that just installing linux itself was a near-sysiphian task, and that a beginner's doing it required help from a panel of experts. as someone said to me recently, "it was something of a right of passage". now, it's trivial (at least with ubuntu, to its credit), but that doesn't help you once you try to use it. i'd like to see my mom, who is a usability designer, try to use linux for about five minutes, and then read her report; i don't think it'd be a very long one. currently i'm stuck without a disk search tool featuring find-by-content capability, until my new laptop gets here and i can download agent ransack (all hail). i can't find such a program for mac os 9 (i'm shocked i've been able to find as many as i have), and i don't even want to think about dealing with finding one (and installiing it) for linux. maybe i'll install plan9 or vms on that computer, and just keep it around to impress girls. or, at least install a manly window manager like ion, except that i'd never be able to figure out how to do it. really, the package system is totally fucked. if linux found a way to get around that, it might be taking a step towards being actually usable by halfway-normal people. jesus christ i went off-topic on that one. we haven't seen a storm like that since "is time travel possible?". yes -- i'm fond of my turtle. maybe he'd make a good ubuntu mascot for the next version ("trippy turtle"). |
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