My format: Guardian

I come from the Net - through systems, peoples, and cities - to this place: MAINFRAME. My format: Guardian. To mend and defend - to defend my new found friends, their hopes and dreams, and to defend them from their enemies. They say The User lives outside the Net and inputs games for pleasure. No one knows for sure, but I intend to find out. ReBoot!

Hacking, Hollywood style

Dear Hollywood,

The following images and videos do not depict hacking, or even a plausibly realistic use of computers. I laughed, I cried, I wished I was watching something else.

"One keyboard four hands" is for piano, not computers.

"I'll spout a bunch of fancy words I don't understand, see if I can replicate a capability we should already have."

Edit: video removed due to copyright. "The Crack In The Code" episode of "Bones" featured a "fractal code" etched into a bone that when scanned caused the analyst's computer to burst into flames. There's so much wrong with this, I have to limit myself to just one: Computers don't catch fire from viruses. Period.

Watching a film or TV show shouldn't require me to ignore everything I know about computers.

 (Image credit Penny Arcade)

In closing,

(Image credit Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

The Seven Circles of Linux Purgatory

For the purification of the geek-spirit:

1. panic: no init found. 
2. Obtaining network card drivers
3. fatal error: linux/sys.h: No such file or directory
4. vim
5. Xorg.conf
6. Compiling video card drivers
7. This site is best viewed using current versions of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer at a screen resolution of 800 x 600 or higher.