sudo

Yay Linux jokes. xkcd, a webcomic by some dude named Randall with a physics degree, has too much time on his hands:

While on the subject of sticks:

sudo is the Debian (and subsystems based on it, like Ubuntu and Kubuntu) command for “do”ing something as “su,” or the superuser. In most other distros, you have to log in as “root,” the superuser, using the command “su,” but Debian decided to just skip that and let you do the commands as root whenever you needed to. So (taking the comic’s example, also, “$” is the prompt, like “kidko@localhost $ <you type here>”):
$ make sandwich
sandwich: access denied. Must be root
$ sudo make sandwich
Password:
Target "sandwich" made

Here are a bunch of other funny (working) Unix commands:
I take no reponsibility for any of these:

# % make fire
Make: Don't know how to make fire. Stop.
# % why not?
No match.
# % gotta light?
No match.
# % !1984
1984: Event not found. # (on some systems)
# % How's my lovemaking?
Unmatched '.
# % "How would you rate Bush's incompetence?
Unmatched ".
# % [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].
# % [Where is my brain?
Missing ].
# % ^How did the sex change^ operation go?
Modifier failed.
# % ^How did the sex change operation go?
Bad substitute.
# % If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.
# % man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.
# % %blow
%blow: No such job.
# % \(-
(-: Command not found.
# % sh
$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!
# $ mkdir matter; cat >matter
matter: cannot create
# % cd /tmp
% touch this; chmod 000 this
% ln -s /usr/bin/touch U
% U this
U: cannot touch this: no write permission
# % rm meese-ethics
rm: meese-ethics nonexistent
# % cd ~god
Unknown user: god.
# % ar m God
ar: God does not exist
# % make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.
# % sleep with me
bad character
# % ^What is saccharine?
Bad substitute.
# % drink
bottle: cannot open
opener: not found
# % alias alias alias
alias: Too dangerous to alias that.
# % cat catfood
cat: cannot open catfood
# % cat "food in cans"
cat: can't open food in cans
# % nice man woman
No manual entry for woman.
# % man p***y
No manual entry for p***y.
# % rm God
rm: God nonexistent
# % ar r God
ar: creating God
# % Unmatched ".
Unmatched ".
# % write desert
desert is not logged on.
# % man you
No manual entry for you.
# % !bluemoon
bluemoon: Event not found.
# % scan for yellow_pages
yellow_pages: Is a directory
# %touch me
%chmod 000 me
%touch me
touch: cannot touch me: permission denied
# % ar x "my love life"
ar: my love life does not exist
# % ar x "matey, the treasure"
ar: matey, the tresure does not exist
# % talk Gorvachev@Kremlin
talk: Kremlin: Can't figure out network address.
# % talk Comrade Khruchev
[Your party is not logged on]
# make "bottle open"
make "heads or tails of all this"
make love
make mistake
make sense
man woman
man -kisses dog
# % echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln256%Pln256/snlbx]sb3135071790101768542287578439snlbxq'|dc
GET A LIFE!
# % ping elvis.rice.edu | awk '{print substr($1,1,5), $2, $3}'
elvis is alive
# % finger body-of-christ@bread-jar.mass
Unknown host
# % finger huge-keg-party@big-house
Unknown host
# % make ' ' bang ' ' with gun
make: Fatal error: Don't know how to make target ` '

High school student builds fusion reactor

A Michigan high school senior uses parts and materials scrounged from the local hardware story and eBay to build a working fusion reactor. In Gadget Lab.

That is cool stuff. It looks like it would blow up if you looked at it, but surprisingly, it *says* it works.

Shutdown Day is calling itself the “biggest Internet experiment,” since anybody with a modem can participate. The idea? Shut down your computer for 24 hours, alongside 44404 other people (and counting). So… here’s my question: can you?

Grid Wars 2

After hearing that Geometry Wars was on Windows, I decided to do some snooping for a Linux clone. What did I find? A lot. The most popular one of all? Grid Wars. Unfortunatly, it was taken down, since Microsoft was

…beginning to feel the effects of the Geometry Wars clones on our sales…

So what now? Play the second one, of course. Here is the home page, and a good strategy guide/review/screenshot-bank is over on this site. I’ve got it running fine with at least 50 enemies and death particles from 20 others and a black hole, playing with my Logitech® Dual Action gamepad. Fun.

SwitchOff, Chapter 1, Page 02

002 is finally done.