I have a bug finding program. You pass in the name of a code file and it returns a truth value if there is a bug in that file or not.

The current prototype is:

bool hasBug(String &progFile) {
    return TRUE;
}

G_Morgan’s function could not be any more true.

The best part is really the articled linked to by that Reddit page. It links back to a type of “Coder for Higher” page where this gem appears:

Description
The purpose of this project is to create a debugger program. This program will take as input the source code another program, and will analyze that other program and determine if it will run to completion, or have an error, or go into an infinite loop.

To state that another way, given a function f and input x, determine if f(x) will halt.

Very well played sir. Very well played. I just hope that Alan Turing isn’t turning over in his grave because of this joke.

Assumptions:

• Connecting to a Windows Server 2003-based VPN with a domain configured with defaults
• Short/Friendly Authentication Domain Name: XXCompany
• Username: usera
• password: passworda
• VPN host: vpn.example.com

If you click on your network icon -> VPN connections -> Configure VPN, you would expect to be able to click add and start filling in information. From a new, vanilla installation the Add box will be grayed out. This is because a VPN manager has yet to be installed. Open a Terminal and type in

sudo apt-get install network-manager-pptp

If you get a message saying “E: Couldn’t find package network-manager-pptp” you may need to enable more repository locations. Once that package, and any related packages are installed, restart your computer. Then, you’ll be happy to see that the Add button under Configure VPN is now activated.

Click the Add button and for a Windows VPN, leave the server type as PPTP:

VPN Connection Type

Clicking create brings you to the next screen in which you define your VPN credentials.

VPN Connection Information

The Gateway is your VPN host. For username, I’ve only got authentication working when the domain name is added to your username in the tradional Windows domain format (<domain>\<user name>). There may be a different name for that format, but most corporate users should understand that notation. Obviously the show password doesn’t need to be clicked, but for the sake of completeness, I included where the password should go. You can also leave the Password field blank and just enter it every time you start the VPN Connection. I’m sure that this is much more secure. Leave the NT Domain field empty.

Lastly clicking the Advanced will get you to this following screen:

PPTP Advanced Screen

Make sure to uncheck PAP under Authentication Methods as well as check “Use Point-to-Point encryption.”

If everything has gone well, then you should be able to save all your changes and start the VPN up and have it connect. A little lock icon will appear on your connection indicating that a secure VPN connection has been made.

Keep in mind that this method forces all traffic to be tunneled to the VPN host, which means that in the base case, your internet will stop working until you disconnect from the VPN. There must be a way around this, but I have yet to come across it. Enabling the VPN changes your computer’s route table. There is an option under “IPv4 Settings” -> “Routes” that ignore automatically obtained routes, but that doesn’t help in this case, nor is it what we want (I don’t think). If you happen to get an error while attempting to connect to your VPN host, open a terminal and issue this command and watch the log of the attempted VPN connection.

tail -f /var/log/syslog

This proved invaluable to me while trying to configure my VPN client.
More information regarding setting up a VPN client within Ubuntu can be located on Launchpad article about VPNCLients.

As of June 30, 2008, Microsoft is disabling the DAV protocol and you will no longer be able to access your Hotmail Inbox via Outlook Express. As an alternative, we recommend that you download Windows Live Mail, a free desktop e-mail client that has the familiarity of Outlook Express and much more.

As suggested I downloaded and installed Windows Live Mail since I really did want to continue to use my old Hotmail accounts. As it turns out, it was nothing more than an crappier version of Outlook Express built on top of Outlook Express. Why Microsoft felt it important to make me download and install Windows Live Mail rather than just patch Outlook Express is far beyond me. But I believe the best part about Windows Live Mail is it’s ability to crash after at least 30 seconds to a minute once I’ve exited out of the application:

Windows Live Mail FAIL

This wouldn’t be as bothersom, though still pretty bad, if this happened right as I exited. However this always pops up much later which inturrupts me from what I am doing. I’ve installed this on one of my Windows boxes. Needless to say, I will not be installing it on my other Windows box. To further add insult to injury, my other Windows box’s Outlook Express still works fine after four and a half months of use. Microsoft, if you want to continue to have me use Hotmail, you will never disable my Outlook Express. Free or not, I will not use trash, and that trash I happy call your Hotmail web interface and Windows Live Mail.

“Upgrading” from Ubuntu to Windows XP? That is not what I’d call an upgrade. This puts Ubuntu in a really bad light if read by people who don’t know better. This sort of false advertising and misleading the public with opinion rather than fact is pretty bad in this case. I’ll meet you half way on this and won’t say that Ubuntu is an upgrade from Windows (since my personal opinion doesn’t matter here). It’d be more honest if you suggested that Windows is an alternative to Ubuntu, rather than an upgrade.

Hot off the heals of the latest internet uproar dealing with Google and the End User License Agreement for Google Chrome, I’ve been thinking a lot about this licensing business. What I have to say is not coming from a legal background, rather coming from a much more “open source” background.

When I dug into the EULA of Google Chrome, I was a bit more than pissed off about (from the EULA):

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

Now right off the bat, I decided against using Google Chrome for anything more than viewing sites like www.digg.com and putting it through the Acid2 test. After that I was going to uninstall it. All I really wanted to see is the speed difference and things of that nature. Obviously I couldn’t use this for work and I decided against using it for a personal use.

After lunch the next day (yesterday) I decided against uninstalling it. I really didn’t mind Google using anything I put up on the internet anyway since I don’t even know how many other sites do the same thing. For personal, daily use, I have no problem using Chrome as my browser. I just had to make sure to avoid using it at work as well as not use it when posting code from personal projects (though all code I write for personal reasons will be open sourced under a Gnu Public License anyways). Frankly if any of my content is ever used by Google, I’d be pretty happy.

Then I remembered this blog. Yes it’s been a while, but it is still my blog and my content. How do I feel about Google being able to use my blog posts? Pictures on here? I decided to formalize my blog postings and finally put up a license for the contents of my blog, which you can find under the “Legal” text on the right sidebar (as of 2008-09-04).

Information such as these blog posts and code should be for everyone to be used as the author dictates.

Now in Google’s defense, they have admitted mistake and plan on retroactively fixing this, which is fantastic. So, much applause to Google.

** UPDATE ** Google has now updated their EULA for Chrome and explained why that part was in there to begin with.

It is with a sad and heavy heart that I report that there doesn’t seem to be a Final Fantasy 7 release for the Playstation 3 today. Not at the Best Buy in Pasadena anyway. Seems like the internet was right once again. And, in a way, I didn’t think it would happen either. I just had some hope. Hope that is now crushed.

If you need me, I will be in the corner sulking and watching Spaced.

and

A friend of mine linked me to this post that also talks about Final Fantasy VII PS3 Version releasing August 16th.

If anyone has any other information, please let me know.

*Edit* Here is the original Kotaku link.