SemiAntics

Nerdcore is a growing genre in music, probably almost entirely independent (indie) music. The music is all about nerds, geeks and people with no lives. Remember when Weird Al Yankovic did that song, Too white and nerdy? That was his take on nerdcore (a parody, of course). But the real stuff is much better (worse) if you are (aren’t) a computer nerd.

Monzy is a PhD student at Stanford (computer science, of course) who makes nerdcore music. Kill -9 is the only song I’ve watched / listened to all the way through, and honestly, I think one song of nerdcore is far too much. But it’s hilarious if you happen to know anything about computer science. If you don’t, for Thor’s sake, please don’t watch this movie!

Check it out at YouTube: Monzy performs at Stanford.

Remember when George W. Bush “won” the election in 2000, and again in 2004? Remember how it was obvious that a lot of fishy things happened, but we still ended up with a crook in office? Well, it seems as though the same things happen at VCU with the Student Government Association elections. Yes, there was illegal campaigning, breaking of rules, turmoil and disarray. It’s just disgusting, but not the least bit surprising.

There were only three tickets in the election, and two of them seem to have honored all the VCU policies regarding campaigning, paperwork, etc. The third (the Lee ticket) seems to have disrespected the entire VCU community. The Lee party posted flyers on cars that, according to Titsworth and Moehl, looked a lot like parking tickets. This was deemed outside the Judicial Review Board’s jurisdiction, according to the Commonwealth Times (CT). Even if the legal part of it was out of their jurisdiction, it is disrespectful and trashy to post junk on cars. I think this is an issue that should have been dealt with severely.

There is also the issue of Lee allowing her signature to be forged. She scoffed at that like it was just one of those things you have to do. The final straw was when VCU library staff asked her not to campaign in the library. She denies ever having been asked, even though the staff person testified to the board. Then, she went back into the library to campaign again!

All together, these issues seem quite petty – and that is true, they are petty. But what is really petty is that it even happened. You might even think I’m just ranting, but consider how small VCU is – a mere 30,000 students, and only about 2000 of them even voted. It’s a lot of baloney for such a small place. Further, this is just an ongoing saga of what the students have to deal with all the time, especially the student organizations.

“The student body has spoken,” Lee said (accoring to the CT). “I really wish we could have more focus on the issues.” Well, Jessica Lee, the issue is that you are not worthy of the office, and now people know it. In fact, that’s not really the issue (we don’t care that you aren’t worthy); the issue is that this will cause even less students to be involved with the things that happen around campus.

If there ever was an excuse for not making hardware drivers for GNU/Linux, it does not exist now. The Linux kernel community is now offering free drivers to any company that makes a hardware device.

There are a few obvious things that a company has to do, such as provide some specifications on how the hardware works. It just so happens that the awesome people in the kernel community have provided for non-disclosure, in case the details of the hardware implementation are sensitive (this should NOT be the case if the item is patented).

Read what Greg Kroah-Hartman has to say about free kernel drivers.

If you have some hardware that is not supported, please send a letter to the company, and include a copy of Greg’s post. I have written to several companies, and they do write back. I am not sure if one letter will get them to cooperate, but I’m sure that it won’t take too many letters.

Java doesn’t work the same way on all platforms (GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac), even though the Java Virtual Machine was designed for that purpose. In fact, there are some system inconsistencies that apparently can’t be avoided. For example, each operating system uses different end-of-line characters in text files.

• Windows: [ \r\n ]
• GNU/Linux or Unix: [ \n ]
• Macintosh: [ \r ]
• and sometimes [ \f ]

If you want to read information from a string, input stream or a file, you can use the Scanner class to accomplish this task. If the file is delimited with a comma and then a space “, ” you must set the delimiter by object.useDelimiter(", ");. You can also put a regular expression in the parentheses like this: object.useDelimiter(", |\n"); and then the Scanner will look for a comma-space or an end of the line.

Suppose you want to scan a line that contains several types of data (String, int, etc) that looks like this: George Jones, 44, 88, 99, 22, 90 and suppose you set up to scan it using this method: object.next();. You must first set the delimiter, of course. Then you will have no trouble scanning the name George Jones. But, then let’s suppose you want to scan the numbers as integers. You can use object.nextInt(); which works fine until the last number 90. At that point there is no next comma-space delimiter to find, so you get an exception.

The solution to this problem is to use the proper delimiters: object.useDelimiter(", |\n");. In the case that you created the file on Windows, that will NOT work. You must use \r\n in that case. Once you know the correct characters for the file, you can use the expression "\n|\r\n|\r" and it will work on files created on all major operating systems.

Another complication to using Java is if you compile a program on Linux it will set the default end-of-line characters to the GNU/Linux (\n); however if you compile it on Windows it will use (\r\n).

Somtimes it may be necessary to use the [ \f ] delimiter, though I am not sure at which times. This delimiter is called the “form feed” character. If you have problems with end of lines, just try it.

Also, be aware that GNU/Linux text documents usually have a trailing empty line at the end of the file.

To make a cd from an iso file, it’s pretty easy with cdrecord. I’ve had less luck using graphical front-ends to cdrecord (such as xcdroast, xfburn, etc).

You must first create the iso file to burn. This is pretty simple. Make a temporary directory somewhere, and put all the files you wish to burn into this directory. To create an iso filesystem image in the file output.iso, where the directory temp will become the root directory in the iso:

mkisofs -o output.iso temp

Now, to find information on your burner device:

cdrecord --scanbus dev=ATA

Then, to burn the iso image:

cdrecord -v speed=40 dev=ATA:x,x,x output.iso

Where the x,x,x is noted in the readout for the scanbus command.

Obviously, you can change the speed as you wish. I usually write as fast as possible, and I don’t have problems.

Often, when using Firefox and Thunderbird on GNU/Linux, there is a problem that can be annoying. When you click on an email address in Firefox, it won’t do anything (you want Thunderbird to open a new message with the email address in the mailto link). It can happen in Thunderbird too, when you click on a url (you want Firefox to open a new tab or window with that url). Here’s a pretty simple way to fix it.

In order to get Firefox to send mailto links to Thunderbird:

1. Open Firefox
2. In the navigation bar type about:config
3. In the page of items right click and select New >> String
4. Insert name: network.protocol-handler.app.mailto
5. Insert value: thunderbird

Another way to do it is to edit your “/home/USER/.mozilla/xxxxx.default/prefs.js” file. You should do this when Firefox is not running, otherwise it will not save the modifications. Just add one of these lines, according to your specific system. You may have to check to see which it is for you by running “thunderbird” and “mozilla-thunderbird” in a terminal to see which one opens Thunderbird.

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.mailto","thunderbird");
OR
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.mailto","mozilla-thunderbird");

In order to get Thunderbird to send url clicks to Firefox, edit the file “/home/USER/.mozilla-thunderbird/xxxxx.default/prefs.js” by adding the following line:

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http","firefox");

If you are using another program for mail, you could try the part above using, for example, “evolution” instead of thunderbird.

I recently read the book Nathaniel’s Nutmeg by Giles Milton. It was given to me by my father as a gift. I think he intended it to be somewhat humorous, given the name of the book. However, as soon as I read the first couple pages I was interested, and I read the whole book in about a month.

A month may seem like a long time to read a book, but that is just from reading a few pages each night before bed.

The book is mainly about the spice trade between Europe and the Spice Islands of the East Indies. It is generally told from the perspective of the English, but it is not obviously biased at all. The author tells the struggles of the East India Trading Company, and how they fought for a share of the trade in spices (mainly they fought with the Portuguese and the Dutch). In the end it all came down to one island called Run, and one man called Nathaniel Courthope. I won’t tell the ending of the story; I’ll let you read it to find out what happens.

You should read the book if you like history, especially a history that contains a lot of quotes from the people involved. Apparently the captains and crew kept pretty good diaries, and a good portion of them have survived. The author quotes these and other sources frequently, keeping it in the old English dialect, which makes it quite amusing. There are lots of fun words and phrases that we would never use today! Here are a couple good ones:

Never before had the English crew seen such a primitive and barbarous people and they watched the savages with a mixture of awe and disgust. ‘They wear only a short cloake of sheepe or seale skinnes to their middle, the hairie side inward, and a kind of rat’s skinne about their privities.’ – Speaking of a landing by Sir James Lancaster at a port called Table Bay (just around the Cape of Good Hope) about the year 1591.

At last he [John Clarke] was taken down and, ‘being thus wearied and overcome by the torment, he answered yea to whatsoever they asked.’ With the confession down on paper and, ‘having martyred this poor man, they sent him out by foure blacks who carried him between them to a dungeon, where he lay five or six daies without any surgeon to dress him until (his flesh being putrified) great maggots dropped and crept from him in a most loathsome and noisesome manner.’ With the torturers now exhausted after their ordeal, ‘they thus finished their Sabbath day’s work.’ - This by a Dutch eyewitness to the Massacre of Amboyna in 1623.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

—Attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller, a German minister imprisoned during World War II for opposing the Nazi party

Image from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Facts

• 450,000 dead from violence, disease, and malnutrition (as of May 2006)
• 2.5 million displaced persons living in refugee camps in Sudan and Chad
• Extreme sexual violence against women
• Escalating violence, including routine attacks on refugee camps in Sudan and Chad
• 7,000 African Union peace keeping troops for the whole region of Darfur, which is slightly smaller than France
• Withdrawal of humanitarian relief agencies due to escalating violence

The US Government declared the conflict in Darfur to be genocide back in 2004. Nothing has been done about it. The UN approved a resolution to send a 17,000 strong peace keeping force to Sudan but will not do so without the consent of the Sudanese government. The Sudanese government continues to refuse UN forces and to hamper the efforts of the African Union peace keeping forces.

Help save Darfur!

• Educate yourself on the situation.
• Create awareness in your community.
• Lobby the US government to change its policy of inaction.

Sources

• BBC
• Sudanreeves.org
• The International Rescue Committee
• Committee on Conscience

Smoking has probably always been an issue at VCU, but in this new millenium, we must be progressive. There is no excuse for VCU’s continued practice of non-policy. There is a smoking policy for VCU; the problem is that it is completely vague, non-specific, and utterly useless! In the interest of the health of the entire VCU community, myself included, VCU should write a useful smoking policy.

How do we know that the current state of smoking on campus is a real issue? If you walk from one class to another, on an average day you’ll pass a lot of smokers. Of course it depends on how far you walk and what route it is, but it can be as many as 10 or 15 smokers in a hundred feet. But passing smokers isn’t the problem; walking behind them is. When you have to follow a group of people who are smoking, you can end up continually inhaling their second-hand smoke. If you don’t believe me, try walking around campus in a path of traffic, and count how many smokers you pass/follow, and how far you go. Then do the math, and post a reply below.

It’s not as if living in the city is healthy to start with. We already live in an area with poor air quality due to automobiles and factories. It’s a pretty major step to clean up automobile exhaust and factory pollution, but at least it is a recognized problem and there are many people working to help make it better. Likewise, with smoking there are people working to make it better. For example, Linda Hancock at the Office of Health Promotion has been working on the Smoke Free Campus project for years.

There is no need to argue over the health issues of smoking; they are numerous and well documented. (Including the health issues due to second-hand smoke) The ratio of smokers to non-smokers is very much in the favor of non-smokers. It is really just a matter of getting the attention of people who make policy for VCU. In California and other places there are now laws that prohibit smoking in any public building. I have heard that (but don’t have any statistics handy) more people go to bars, clubs and restaurants than before the law was made (at least it hasn’t hurt business, for sure).

Linda Hancock suggests that the most important “next steps” are to keep smoke-free areas within fifty feet of all campus building entrances, and to concentrate on keeping smoking out of public buildings (everywhere, but specifically here in Richmond and around VCU).

In 1990 the Indoor Clean Air Bill was passed in Virginia to provide a smoke free environment for the following:

• Elevators regardless of capacity.
• Common areas in an educational facility, including, but not limited to, classrooms, hallways, auditoriums, and public meeting rooms.
• Any part of a restaurant designated a “non-smoking.”
• Indoor service lines and cashier areas.
• School buses and public conveyances.

There is a bill called the Smoke Free Air Legislation which is sponsored by Senator Brandon Bell. It is a significant bill because it basically provides humans with the right to “opt-in” rather than “opt-out.” Here are the highlights.

Provide smoke free environments for all public areas, restaurants and workplaces with the following exemptions:

• Private automobiles, private residences and home-based businesses, except when used as a licensed child care, adult day care, or health care facility.
• Any hotel or motel room not clearly designated as a “non-smoking” room.
• Private functions.”
• Specialty tobacco stores and tobacco manufacturers.

Write a letter to your representative if you care, and write to me or Linda to get involved more around campus.