FOB

Update 2010-11-20: It has been pointed out to me that dm-crypt can handle cryptoloop volumes. Thus, you may choose to ignore this HOWTO in favor of one on how to do that.

For reasons detailed in Debian Bug #559961 the cryptoloop module has been dropped from the Debian kernel as of the 2.6.32-trunk binary packages. I've filed a complaint at that bug. I know what I'm doing, and am unhappy that the Debian kernel maintainers have taken it upon themselves to gratuitously delete functionality from the Linux kernel image…

This is a rought-draft page that I'm making to take some notes on how I got the Debian Gnome Bluetooth support to work this time around. Bluez and its supporting utilities are an endless source of frustration and perhaps even of nightmare, so it's probably a good idea to have some notes…

This blog was originally called "Project Resolution", although I got tired of putting my Drupal fixes to allow a blog title in again and again and the Drupal folks couldn't find a good way to take them. I had a New Year's Resolution a few years back to blog daily. My one or two readers may have noticed that I'm not managing that any more. However, I think it was a good thing while it was going…

So I just now tried to download and install Firefox for my sister-in-law's computer. I did this by Googling "firefox windows download" and clicking on the first hit. The first hit was a sponsored link to "usfirefoxbrowser.com"; seemed a little strange, but what the heck. The page it took me to looked official enough at a half a glance, so I clicked on the prominent button…

A quote I loved from a recent interview by The XCENTRIKZ. They interviewed Evan Nichols, the creator of Ask Dr. Eldritch.

THE XCENTRIKZ: If you could have a superpower for one day, what would you pick, and what would you do with it?

NICHOLS: I wouldn't want one of the standard superpowers, like invisibility, x-ray vision or super-alphabetization. I'm tempted by the ability to effortlessly generate stunningly brilliant storylines for novels, screenplays and comics, so I could write out treatments for a career's worth of material in a day, but that's rather self-serving. I think I'd go with Kharmalization, which is the ability to instantly cause people to get what they deserve. I'm sure some people would whine about it, but I'd say, "Hey, knock it off! You got what you deserved!

Best answer ever.

A language change I'm seeing a lot of these days is that the abbreviation e.g. is so yesterday; it has been effectively replaced in standard usage with the incompatible abbreviation i.e.

The abbreviation e.g. is from the Latin exemplia gratia, meaning "for example". The abbreviation i.e. is from the Latin id est, meaning "that is". Giving an example with i.e. is kind of strange. It implies that the example given is the only possibility—which really means that it is not a mere example at all.

However, words mean what people agree that they mean. I think I'm going to have to get used to i.e. where e.g. is preferred. Language marches on.

While doing some research for an upcoming paper, I came upon a 2008 blog post describing a special case of the following interesting problem:

Given an alphabet of n symbols, construct a uniformly-selected sequence of m of these symbols, with the sequence containing no duplicate symbols.

[Updated 2009/12/14] The difficulty arises when both m and n are large. The obvious method is a rejection method: repeatedly pick a random symbol from the alphabet and check whether you've picked it already. If not, append it to your target number. The problem is that the duplicate check seems to require log m time even if you code it cleverly, giving an asymptotic performance of O(m log m). Hash tables can help some, but ultimately you're going to waste a lot of time checking for the unlikely case that you've generated a duplicate.

There were various solutions given in the comments, but none of them were optimal. A spoiler follows…

One interesting bit of language evolution that seems to have run its course over the last twenty years is the loss of the distinction between "nauseous" and "nauseated". Historically, "nauseated" has mean that you were sick, and "nauseous" meant that you were making others sick.

In 2009, everyone I know describes their stomach troubles with "I'm nauseous." This is a usage that used to make my father, the general surgeon, react every time. But now when I laughingly agree that "yes, you are a bit nauseous" everyone just looks at me funny.

Language. Go figure.

It is always interesting to me to watch the evolution of language. A good example I've run into a couple of times already today is "infer" vs "imply". Historically, these words have had very different meanings. An inference denotes a conclusion you draw from observed data. An implication is encouragement to others to draw an inference from data you have provided…

The webcomic Schlock Mercenary has evolved over a period of many years into one of the most professionally drawn and produced in the genre. Creator Howard Tayler is famous for his punctuality and hard work, and for turning out a consistently great product…