Mircea Bardac /random_thoughts

I have studied LaTeX over the last semester and I can say I was really impressed. It’s a great tool for any scientist (for the ones who don’t know, it has a powerful rendering engine for mathematic formulas - really useful when writing scientific papers).

Look what I’ve found today on the net:

What is the future of TeX?

Knuth has declared that he will do no further development of TeX; he will continue to fix any bugs that are reported to him (though bugs are rare). This decision was made soon after TeX version 3.0 was released; at each bug-fix release the version number acquires one more digit, so that it tends to the limit pi (at the time of writing, Knuth’s latest release is version 3.14159). Knuth wants TeX to be frozen at version pi when he dies; thereafter, no further changes may be made to Knuth’s source. (A similar rule is applied to Metafont; its version number tends to the limit e, and currently stands at 2.718.)

Source: TeX FAQ

Now, how would it be if people chose such version numbers for their programs? Chaotic? Funny? Definitely original

I have received today an invitation to join GMail from Kevin, one of the Psi developers. Lots of thanks, once again.

I have registered myself an account and sent (& received) my first e-mails.
My first impressions:
- clean interface, easy to use
- efficient ads display (they are really on topic)
- message threading (looks great)
- it also says it has autocomplete for the e-mail addresses - didn’t test this yet, but I’ve noticed that, once you receive an e-mail, the sender’s e-mail is replaced by his name in the e-mails you’ve sent/received.
- there’s a toggle link (show/hide) for the quoted e-mail - only works if the e-mail is at the end (initially, the quoted text is hidden)
- “0% of 1000MB used”… I bet it’s not 1GB, but only 1000MB = 1GB - 24MB (what a waste, can you imagine? 24 more MB… tons of e-mails that I will loose.. loool - it should have been called “1kMBmail”)

Bottom point is:
GMail looks promising. I don’t really know if somebody would really want to keep and search through 1GB of e-mails but, in the next years, I think that the average size of an e-mail would grow (probably because of multimedia content). I’ll wait to see how it is going.

Some of you might be aware of the Windows XP capabilities to sync the time with different time servers around the globe.

In order to get the same effect under Linux, I had to read the following things
[1] Newbie: Intro to cron - I have learned some basic crond configurations - this helped me set up automatic updates every 6 hours at x:15+max(10 sec) with the folowing crontab lines:
# Sync clock: every 4h at :15
15 */6 * * * /usr/bin/sync-clock
[2] NTP Configuration - I actually used the ntpdate configuration because I didn’t want to run a ntp daemon just to sync my computer clock. nptd (ntp daemon) is run only on Time Servers, running time based critical processes (for example, some routers use it). I have used the sync script mentioned there to update the clock using crond

Source: SoftPedia.com News (reported by Symantec)

EPOC.Cabir is a proof-of-concept worm that replicates on Nokia Series 60 phones. This worm repeatedly sends itself to the first Bluetooth-enabled device that it can find, regardless of the type of device. For example, even a Bluetooth-enabled printer will be attacked if it is within range.

Well, it was inevitable… fortunately harmless. The smarter the mobile devices get… the more powerfull the worms will be. Protection is required (low memory, low CPU usage a.k.a power consumption) will be needed.

In my study of PDAs, I’ve come across a website (BatteryUniversity.com) that has tons of information on batteries…
Some highlights:
- Facts about batteries
- Packaging and safety
- Charging / Discharging
- Storing and recycling
- Prolonging battery life
- Battery applications
- Comparisons
& lots of other things you have probably never heard of in your entire life

This is a very important information resource for any user in the modern world.