network

Not too long ago, I switched entirely to Ubuntu for my Linux needs. Long-disenchanted with RedHat, I eventually skipped out on gentoo because I am lazy, and meanwhile I never found a compelling reason to run SuSe. I had begun using Debian Linux for servers and was very happy (in general) with the dpkg system, and along came Debian-based Ubuntu with unparalleled hardware support. I like to run Linux from a single vendor if possible since it simplifies things considerably, so now everything is based on some flavor of Ubuntu. In looking for a firewall GUI configurator which would run on and configure my laptop-based firewall system, I settled on fwbuilder.

While this PC is largely uninteresting, at the moment www.accurateit.com has them for $25 shipped. They are coming with 128MB RAM, ~4GB disk, and a CMOS password. I envisioned using this system as a NAS, containing my 250GB disk. Sadly enough, this is currently my largest-capacity disk, and I have it connected to my laptop (my fastest machine, a 2.16GHz Core Duo-based HPQ mobile workstation with Quadro graphics) via USB2. Just making a high-volume data transfer between that disk and my internal drive can raise CPU consumption to as much as ten percent for sustained periods of time (although it's typically more like three to five percent.) While this is pretty minimal, it's entirely senseless. IEEE1394 has much lower overhead and superior throughput, but the connector on my system is tiny and thus annoying.

If you want to use the mapping functionality of ntop to give you [typically incorrect but better than nothing] geolocation maps on host-information pages (for IP hosts) then you need to install the mapper.pl script on a webhost someplace. Each lookup seems to take around 30-40kB but that's just a guess. I suppose I could use ntop to find out... Regardless, this is how I got mapper.pl to work.

I'm something of a science fiction freak. It's my genre of choice whether we're talking about novels, movies, or video games. Thus, when I encountered Gate 88 I thought I was in heaven.

Gate 88 is a fairly simple top-down realtime strategy game in which the player is represented in the game - by a space ship. As you fly about you can build structures (provided you have sufficient resources) and your goal is to protect your base. You can build factories to produce more resources, research labs to develop new technologies, shipyards which (shock, amazement) produce ships, and various types of turrets to protect your base defenses. The game is designed with a very console-game sensibility in that it is ideally played with a gamepad, and playing with a keyboard will drive you absolutely insane.

You might actually be looking for this other page from which I get occasional page referrals. It has ready-made binaries.