The animations I’ve seen so far for these two classic Street Fighter characters in the upcoming Street Fighter IV make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The Dhalsim teleport and Zangief double-suplex look great. I’d seen some screenshots previously, but they don’t tell you much about the game play. The proof is in the playing, but I’m optimistic that this’ll be a good one.
Ever find yourself sitting in Siberia with nothing but telnet and wish you could log into your IMAP server? Me neither, but just in case, you can add this bobpeers.com article to your list of handy sites.
For years I’ve used the nslookup utility to quickly confirm that something-or-other about a domain name is correct. Commands like “nslookup -type=soa” roll right off my fingers onto the keyboard not because I’m such a fine typist as because I’ve used them so many times. This has earned me some low-grade derision from Linux-enthusiasts, generally the same types that use vi for everything and cannot comprehend the simple luxury of an application like joe. But I digress. Worse than the personal snootiness is when a shell pops up nonsense like this:
$ nslookup deguia.net Note: nslookup is deprecated and may be removed from future releases. Consider using the `dig' or `host' programs instead. Run nslookup with the `-sil[ent]' option to prevent this message from appearing. Server: 208.201.224.33 Address: 208.201.224.33#53 Name: deguia.net Address: 209.204.175.65
Nslookup is deprecated, use dig. Dig does everything nslookup does, but better and uses five less keystrokes. Well… Yeah, dig will tell me what the A record is for www.deguia.net just fine. It’ll also carry along a screenfull of crap with it:
$ dig deguia.net ; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> deguia.net ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 48163 ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;deguia.net. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: deguia.net. 7200 IN A 209.204.175.65 ;; Query time: 0 msec ;; SERVER: 208.201.224.33#53(208.201.224.33) ;; WHEN: Wed Feb 13 20:39:23 2008 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 44
Compare with the simple elegance of nslookup or host:
$ nslookup deguia.net Server: 208.201.224.11 Address: 208.201.224.11#53 Name: deguia.net Address: 209.204.175.65 $ host deguia.net deguia.net has address 209.204.175.65 deguia.net mail is handled by 10 mailin-02.mx.sonic.net. deguia.net mail is handled by 10 mailin-01.mx.sonic.net.
Those two commands together caused less screen-scree than dig did by its little three-letter self. Do I want to wade through all that garbage from dig? Oh hell no. I ran the command to get an answer to a very straightforward question. If I wanted to read a novel I'd have gone to the library. Lots of information there, very little of which is of typically of use to me.
By my calculations, that's roughly a 1:50 signal to noise ratio. For every pixel of output I'm looking for, I'm skimming through 50 pixels of junk. Good old nslookup provides a 1:7 ratio. Same output for my purpose, less jibber jabber, so I waste the five extra keystrokes to save my scroll buffer a little work and keep more previous work on-screen for the moment. More recent versions of host fare well, but lack a crucial ingredient for my purposes: a warning if the response is non-authoritative. That extra couple lines telling where the answer is from has saved my bacon more times than I care to recall.
Earlier today I was perusing lawsofsimplicity.com when a message came through my inbox that reminded me of a little something I'd forgotten all about, the "+short" option. With the +short brewed into a quick little bash alias, dig behaves much more like our good buddy host, but with a lot more handy options available. The web and email content clicked in my head, and I finally find myself willing to give dig another shot.
Ever feel like circumventing the 4th Amendment but were concerned that pesky class-action lawsuits might come down on your villainous ass? Fear not: congress forgives you. You can shelter under the protective wing of a legislative body that would rather cower before a blustering threat of presidential veto than stand up for your civil liberties. The American people can rest assured that their rights are vigorously defended by three co-equal branches of government that through a delicate system of checks and balances can completely prevent the application of our fundamental laws.
My Senators weren’t among them, having voted “nay” to all this nonsense, but it looks like there won’t be an opportunity for the judicial system to actually weight the facts here. I’m a bit annoyed that Senator Feinstein voted for cloture here, which essentially meant she voted to let it pass. I’d be more upset were it not for her past behavior. Happily, she isn’t seeking re-election. I’m sure if Chris Dodd were president, none of this would have been necessary.
Well look what we have here, Anonymous actually showed up. And here I figured this was all just going to fall apart into a massive sweaty pile of failed Internets conspiracy. Don’t get me wrong, Anonymous isn’t going to take out the Scientology people. Not by a long shot. But for a loosely-knit, leaderless mob of image board junkies to get helicopters and riot police involved far exceeds my low, low expectations.
Looks like nobody got nutty and started firebombing stuff, and I don’t see a bunch of mainstream press on the matter (a quick search shows some local coverage in various places, though). Lots of folks have been uploading photos to Flickr documenting their events, with the results ranging from ominously-large crowds of people in masks and fake afros to sad little hodgepodges of a couple guys with fliers.