During a recent trip from Sacramento to Salt Lake City, our flight on a Delta (Song) 757-200 was delayed during pushback onto the taxiway. The flight attendants explained that they were trying to get the saftey video to begin playing, but the LCD monitor on the seat in front of me told me differently. The screen flashed a few times, went black, and then started to display a BIOS POST. Intrigued, I watched intently as the boot process continued. To my delight, a Linux kernel was unpacked, and a Red Hat init process, complete with Tux in the upper-left hand corner, was displayed! I smiled, and quickly tried to capture the moment with a few blurry photos from my cell phone.
From what I can gather, the linux system is used on-board to manage the in flight entertainment system. This system feeds music, Dish Network TV, flight information, and games to each screen during the flight. One of the free games even allows you to play a trivia game against the other passengers. It even appears to have a simple transaction processing system for purchasing several items. I am glad to know Linux is alive and well at 30,000 feet!
The work of an entire semester have finally come to fruition. I finished a lengthy research paper this evening for an English class at Utah Valley State College. I case you are interested, I thought I would publish it here for your enjoyment.
ABSTRACT:
The science of cryptography has existed in one form or another for centuries. There are many common implementations of cryptography in use today such as the HTTPS protocol on the Internet. All forms of data encryption and cryptography require a key in some form or another for use in encoding and decoding data. The inherent problem with any form of cryptography is the possibility that the key may be intercepted by an eavesdropper. In a recent breakthrough a technique called quantum cryptography has been shown to possibly guarantee the privacy of an encryption key during distribution using quantum mechanics. As quantum cryptography continues to evolve, it has potential to become the de facto standard for the transportation of confidential information.
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My close friends and associates know that my Linux distribution of choice has, and will continue to be, Debian. I have been using Debian for home and commerical projects for a number of years. Back when I first became familiar with Debian, few others had ever heard of it.
I was recently pleased to read an article posted the Sydney Morning Herald about Debian’s growing popularity among commercial web servers. The article highlighs the recent release of Debian “Sarge” which was three years in the making. This new release brings a wealth of new featues to the stable software branch of the operating system.
I am constantly finding myself using the Windows Command Prompt and accidentally entering commands such as:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>ls
'ls' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
So I went on a quest to see if there was an easy way to use POSIX (Portable Operating System based on Unix) commands in the Windows Command Prompt.
The answer… Cygwin!!
Cygwin is about the niftiest thing since sliced bread. In a nutshell, it is a collection of a buch of common GNU posix applications ported and compiled to run on Windows. And best of all, it is a sinch to install.
Steps to install Cygwin:
- Download and run the installer
- Select Download Source
- Select Root Install Directory
- Select Local Package Directory
- Select Connection & Download Mirror
- Select Packages (Toggle the View to “Full”). Be sure to go over the list and add any extra packages you would like to download.
The installer will then download and install your selected packages.
Steps to make Cygwin commands available in the Windows Command Prompt:
- Hold ALT and Double-Click “My Computer” and select the “Advanced” tab
- Click the “Environment Variables” button
- Under the “System variables” section, double-click on the variable “Path”
- Then, simply add
;c:\cygwin\bin to the end of the variable section of the pop-up.
- You can then safely “Ok” out of all the open windows.
- Restart your computer. A reboot is required for the path variable changes to take effect.
Once rebooted, you can then issue your chosen linux commands in the Windows Command Prompt:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>ls -la
total 518
drwxrwx---+ 14 Administrators SYSTEM 0 Nov 29 23:21 .
drwxrwxr-x+ 8 Administrators SYSTEM 0 Nov 27 12:29 ..
dr-x------+ 6 ???????? None 0 Nov 27 16:33 Application Data
drwx------+ 2 ???????? None 0 Nov 8 13:21 Cookies
drwx------+ 2 ???????? None 0 Nov 29 23:38 Desktop
dr-x------+ 3 ???????? None 0 Nov 27 12:29 Favorites
drwx------+ 6 ???????? None 0 Nov 8 06:07 Local Settings
dr-x------+ 2 ???????? None 0 Nov 27 12:29 My Documents
-rwx------+ 1 ???????? None 524288 Nov 29 23:38 NTUSER.DAT
The Mozzilla Foundation announced today a new version and a new website for its two flagship projects, the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client. Moreover, the new Firefox version 1.5 provides the cutting edge of features for the popular internet browser. Give it a try, it is well worth the download and upgrade.
Download Firefox 1.5
