FCKeditor is the most feature-filled web-based rich text editor I have encountered so far. It requires no installation on the user’s computer, just JavaScript. Being an XHTML-compliant editor with compatibility for Internet Explorer 5.5+ and Gecko browsers (Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape), it beats the would-be competitors by a mile. It has the features of a fully-fledged word processor, so many that an entire CMS could be based around this editor.
The best part of all is that FCKeditor is open source, i.e. free! Needless to say, FCKeditor will definitely find its way into my future web applications.
perl.com: Perl Slurp-Eaze — how to efficiently slurp entire files into memory.
The Xbox is very unlike other game consoles, in that it’s actually a complete x86 PC. Here are its specs:
- Intel Pentium III 733
- 64MB RAM
- GeForce 3 graphics
- Ethernet port
- 4 USB ports (the controller connections are actually USB!)
- 8 or 10 GB IDE hard drive
- DVD-ROM
All this only costs $150! Here’s the bad news. In order to prevent people from doing whatever they want on the Xbox, Microsoft added a protection scheme which requires them to sign code before it can be run. However, when you unlock the full power of your Xbox, you can do so much more with it: run Linux on it, use it as a media center for your home theater, modify the games that you own for more gameplay (Halo!), use it as a web server, anything you can use a normal computer for.
There are two options: 1) buy a modchip, 2) use a “softmod”, which exploits a bug in a game by opening a tampered savegame. Both options allow you to run unsigned code on the Xbox.
Continue reading ‘Modifying the Xbox’
Recently I’ve experienced much downtime with my ISP, Comcast. I was able to narrow it down to their DNS servers, because their gateway was reachable. The DNS servers, on the other hand, were completely off the map. All ping requests timed out. After fiddling with router settings and renewing our IP address, I got the DHCP server to assign me new DNS servers which are working (at least for now).
This isn’t the first time this has happened. Over the past few weeks, I’ve experienced this problem several times. Last week my dad called Comcast and found that they were aware of this problem and that they were “working on it.”
When the servers went down again today, I just had to find out what was really going on. I googled for “comcast dns outage”–the situation was just as I had suspected. Why Comcast is chasing DNS outages | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com reveals that Comcast’s DNS architecture just isn’t enough to handle DDoS attacks.
Because they’ve got no management tools and little or no failover, when they get hit, they can’t respond effectively. They’re essentially fighting a five alarm fire with a bucket brigade. As a consequence, they have had multiple, multi-million customer, multi-hour outages.
Hopefully they’ll get this problem fixed soon, because you really can’t do that much on the computer without Internet access. 
Why Comcast is chasing DNS outages by ZDNet’s Phil Windley — If you’re not a Comcast customer, you’re probably blissfully unaware of the problems that Comcast customers have been experiencing the last few weeks. If you are a Comcast customer, then like me, you’ve likely experienced serious downtime and you’re probably wondering what’s going on. I’ve heard a few things through the grapevine and what I’ve [...]
Here’s a problem that was presented to me in Math Enrichment. It’s main purpose is to guide an investigation of infinite series.
Part 1:
The cookie monster sneaks into the kitchen and eats half a cookie; on the second day he comes in and eats half of what remains of the cookie from the first day; on the third day he comes in and eats half of what remains from the second day. If the cookie monster continues this process for seven days, how much of the cookie has he eaten? How much is left?
Part 2:
Problem: Share 6 cookies among 7 people. Restrictions: You cannot use 6/7 or any non-reduced form of that fraction. Find a way to use the sum of an infinite series.
(Obviously, the cookies must be divided equally.)
Here is my 9-page, illustrated solution in PDF format.