I moved back to Lillington, N.C., in preparation of the Fall 2007 semester at Campbell Law yesterday. Today, I sought access to my files back home in Shelby, N.C. — something that I often do. Unfortunately, my IP address has changed here in Lillington, and I had previously restricted SSH access to the specific computer at home to the old IP address. To make things worse, I also restricted remote management of my router to the same IP address. I still had SSH access to a throwaway computer back home.

What to do; what to do?

My first thought was to SSH into the unrestricted Linux box at home and use Lynx, a text-based CLI browser. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. The router required Javascript, and my installation of Lynx wasn’t up to the task.

So, in the deep recesses of my brain came a solution:

ssh -X -l helix [IP address at home of unrestricted computer] firefox

The “X” switch on SSH tells SSH to redirect the output over the SSH connection when the remote command is run. Therefore, I opened an instance of Firefox on my remote, unrestricted Linux box. I then opened 192.168.0.1 — the local address of my router at home — in that instance of Firefox. I made the necessary changes to remote management, and while I was there, I opened up the restricted computer to the new IP address.

Linux is pretty nifty, eh?

I guess I’m once again on the other side of popular opinion in computers, but I rather like Vista. The reason for this may very well be that my standards for Microsoft are much lower than my standards for Linux, but I still arrive at the conclusion that Vista is not a bad operating system. Even though I turned off User Account Control after exactly one minute, four seconds of usage, it was a valiant effort by Microsoft to combat serious problems the majority of users continue to have.

The bottom line is that Vista is marginally better than XP (if you want a real review…). It is enough to move it from my ranking of third-best operating system (behind Linux, generally, and Tiger) to second-best. Don’t get too excited, though, Apply fanboys; Vista is (and Tiger was) a distant second to Linux, and from my perspective when I use my Linux box, it is hard to really tell who is in second anyway. (It’s only when I muck around with the common trash that I can even really tell.) The point is moving slightly behind to slightly ahead would normally be a great accomplishment, but in the end, it’s still second place.

In any event Vista is definitely not worth the price — as high as $400 for Vista Ultimate edition. I think it’s probably worth, to me, about a hundred bucks (hey, this is a compliment!). But, then again, aren’t the best operating systems free?

Check out this picture of the breakup of AT&T in 1984. It traces each of the smaller companies to today. How long until AT&T owns Qwest then Verizon?

Checkmate for checkers — Nature

Computer scientists at the University of Alberta have solved the game of checkers. This means that every conceivable game from start to finish has been mapped out, making a computer that utilizes the solved algorithms essentially unbeatable.

The team directed Chinook so it didn’t have to go through every one of the 500 billion billion (5 * 10[^]20) possible moves. Not all losing plays needed to be analysed; instead, for each game position, Chinook needed to work out only a move that would allow it to win. In the end, only 1/5,000,000 of the moves were computed.

Every time it was in the news that a human was playing a computer at chess (IBM’s Deep Blue, e.g.), I wondered when chess would be solved. Essentially, the computer (in either checkers or chess) would not need to be programmed with the logic, that is found in today’s A.I., to battle the human opponent. The current state of the board after each move would only need to be checked against a database of winning moves. Chess has considerable more possibilities than checkers; therefore, I would assume it is quite a few years off from being solved.

With regards to victory in checkers, though, humans have officially become second-class.

Here is a prime example of why fanboys (of anything) irritate me. Someone is accusing Microsoft of “ripping off” the Apple Universal logo; although, I could swear that I’ve seen that symbol somewhere before. For bonus examples, be sure to read the first few comments.

Here’s a link breaking down the “fine print” accompanying the iPhone. Enjoy.