Humor in Operating Systems Books

In "Operating System Concepts", (Avi Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, Greg Gagne) while explaining the notion of multiprogramming:

• "This idea is common in other life situations. A lawyer does not work for only one client at time. While one case is waiting to go to trial or have papers typed, the lawyer can work on another case. If she has enough clients, the lawyer will never be idle for lack of work. (Idle lawyers tend to become politicians, so there is a certain social value in keeping lawyers busy.)"

In "Modern Operating Systems", (Andrew Tanenbaum) while referring to the "little research" being done in deadlock detection:

• "None of it is even remotely practical in real systems.
  Its main function seems to be keeping otherwise
  unemployed graph theorists off the streets."
  

κι αυτόν τον καραγκιόζη τον Αλ Γκορ

"Αυτό που με κάνει σκανταλιάρη, πάντως, είναι το politically correct. Τη σάχλα αυτή τη σιχαίνομαι - τη μοντέρνα οικολογία, τους οικολόγερους και τις οικολόγριες κι αυτόν τον καραγκιόζη τον Αλ Γκορ. Παίζει και στην παράσταση! Είδα το ντοκιμαντέρ «Μια ενοχλητική αλήθεια». Αυτός υπέγραψε για βομβαρδισμούς στο Ιράκ και τη Γιουγκοσλαβία και σου λέει μετά ότι δεν φταίνε τα πλουτώνια, πρέπει ν' αλλάξεις τη λάμπα και να κλείσεις την τοστιέρα..."

Τζίμης Πανούσης ( απο συνέντευξη εδώ )

The Kerkis Font Family (Latex pack good, TTF bad)

The kerkis font family

http://iris.math.aegean.gr/kerkis/

produces some great results, especially on latex documents and especially in greek. So you just include the kerkis package in your latex document (\usepackage{kerkis}) and you get something as pretty as this:



But beware: This font, when installed as a TTF in windows (that is, pasted in the windows/fonts directory) can cause the gdi plus windows xp library to crash! After installing the fonts yesterday, applications such as YzDock, objectDock and similar ones kept crashing on start-up. Then I noticed ms office 2008 word crashing, and finally photoshop CS2. These apps all crashed on gdiplus.dll, except word which crashed on some other dll. After a few system restore attempts, msconfig configurations, I thankfully ended up in this thread, of a forum. Yes, I had installed a third-party font. So, after a good laugh, I thought that I should warn people getting similar errors...
I want to make clear that this is about the truetype fonts installed in the windows/fonts directory and has nothing to do with the latex package which works great. If you want to install the true type fonts then do so, they can be easily removed if similar problems occcur ( go to windows/fonts directory and delete them )

Eugenios Trivizas, Sta Akra

another great storyteller, Eugene Trivizas

Crooked Tree

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story:

In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me; I'm tall and I'm straight and I'm handsome. Look at you; you're all crooked and bend over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together.

And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper.

And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.
~Tom Waits

uoaMail notifier [ Firefox Add-on ]

Πρίν απο κάποιο καιρό άρχισα να φτιάχνω ενα add-on για τον Firefox που βασικά είναι ενα mail notifier για accounts στο webmail¹ του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών.

Πλέον η επέκταση είναι διαθέσιμη αποκλειστικά απο το Firefox Add ons
Download Link [ version 0.4 ]
Download Link [ version 0.3 ]
Download Link [ version 0.2 ]


Some Features:
~ Multiple Accounts [user/pass, server]
~ Define max mail check interval [ possible that check is done in less time ]
~ Select to be notified only for personal mail
~ Alert notification (see image) ~ availiable only in Windows

1: [ webmail.uoa.gr ]Έχει δοκιμαστεί στο di.uoa.gr και di.uoa.gr (folders) αλλά πρέπει να δουλεύει και στα άλλα domain

Comments are enabled for support / questions

Κάποια Screenshots :


[ Windows ]


[ Windows ]


[ Windows ]

[ Linux ]


[ Windows ~ not availiable on other os]


[ Linux ]



[ Linux ]

Makes you wonder

1a
1b
2
3a
3b
4

Mr. 1 thought that "Gandhi-ism and all it stands for will, sooner or later, have to be grappled with and finally crushed". Also, that "It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle-Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace...to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor". And: the apartheid state.

No need to talk about Mr. 2, I think. Quoting his democratical and peace-loving words "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves", "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac" etc.

Mr. 3 let us all know about the threat of the ManBearPig . Also he wants us to know that we will save the world if we unplug the TV while we sleep [but travelling with his private jet(s) is ok].

To Mr. 4 we should bow.

Mr. 1 was voted greatest Briton. Mr 2 and 3 got a nobel peace price. Mr 4 didn`t.

a-few-days-ago (and now)

(.)

Hosting Problem

Fixed.
My account on the site that hosted Archive, Galleries etc. has been deleted, so temporarily those sections are out of order.

OpenGL, Glut and Intel 945GM

Running an OpenGL app on a laptop with an Intel 945GM (128 shared) graphics card, I got a little disappointed by a couple of things such as the low fps. But the major problem was quite strange: artifacts, dissapearing polygons. Anyway turns out that the default value for the depth buffer in the OpenGl settings for the graphics card was 16 bits. So what you should do if you are having problems with OpenGL apps (mine was build with glut) on this kind of graphics cards is:

• right click, graphics properties (or the long way: right click, properties, settings, advanced, select the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Driver and then click on Graphics Properties)

• From the menu, click the '3d Settings' button

• Finally, change the Depth Buffer Bit Depth from whatever it is to 24 Bit Depth Buffer.

OpenGL | Glut API

NMA - Here Comes The War

April 2006, Athens

Thanasis Papakonstantinou - Pexlivanis

Theatro Likavitou, June 2006

Problems, problems, problems

The importance of our every-day 'problems'.
(Picture: A high-school in iraq, got it from here)

Cool4Sms Firefox Extension not working

Λόγω αλλαγής του website της υπηρεσίας cool4u, με την οποία δεν είναι συμβατή η έκδοση 1 του cool4sms firefox extension, δεν λειτουργεί η αποστολή sms μέσω του extension. Ελπίζω να φτιάξω σύντομα κάποια νεώτερη έκδοση.

Day after tomorrow

[...]
They fill us full of lies, everyone buys
'bout what it means to be a soldier
I still do`nt know how I`m supposed to feel
'bout all the blood that`s been spilled
Will God on this throne
get me back home
on the day after tomorrow

You can`t deny, the other side
don`t wanna die anymore than we do
what i `m trying to say is don`t they pray
to the same God that we do?

and tell me how does god choose
whose prayers does he refuse?
who turns the wheel
who throws the dice
on the day after tomorrow

I`m not fighting for justice
I`m not fighting for freedom
I`m fighting, for my life
and another day in the world here

I just do what I`ve been told
We` re just the gravel on the road
and only the lucky ones come home
on the day after tomorrow

and the summer, it too will fade
and with it brings the winter`s frost dear
and i know we too are made
of all the things that we have lost here

I`ll be 21 today
I been saving all my pay
and my plane will touch down
on the day after tomorrow

Day After Tomorrow:
- TW (2004): "The government looks at these 18-year-old kids as shell casings, you know, like we're getting low on ammo, send in some more. We're neck deep in the big muddy and the big chief is telling us to push on and offer up our children. I sure wouldn't want to let my boys go." (Source: "Bard Of The Bizarre". Telegraph Magazine (UK). By Richard Grant)

- TW (2004): "If you write tunes or whatever. I guess that's all you really can do is put a human face on the war. These are MY feelings. You know I just tried to imagine a soldier writing home from ANYWHERE. This is your war you have lost, both sides have lost." (Source: "BBC Interview With Tom Waits." BBC Radio 4 (UK). October 4, 2004. By Mark Coles)

- TW (2004): Tom Waits pauses briefly to consider whether "Day After Tomorrow," which takes the form of a letter home from a soldier at the front, should be interpreted as anti-war in general, or anti-Bush in particular. In the end, he decides, it all comes to the same thing. "Bush calls himself a wartime president, so if you're anti-war you're anti-Bush and if you're anti-Bush you're anti-war," reasons Waits, during a recent phone interview. "I don't know whether he came in knowing he was a wartime president and said, `Well you know what, the only thing missing here is a war.' He's like a doctor who breaks your leg. And then comes in and fixes it for you." (Source: "Songs Of Decay From Waits." Toronto Star (Canada). October 5, 2004. By Vit Wagner)

- TW (2005): "Yeah just a soldier writing home to his family. Tried to make it so it's not really about necessarily this war that we're in now, the Iraq war, but in fact about any war really. Because I guess the letters home are probably the same. I think most of the soldiers are really like the gravel on the road. NS: What do you mean by that? TW: Well the gravel on the road that the others are driving on, you know? Spent shell casings." (Source: "Cool Ivories", American Routes radio show, by Nick Spitzer. February 16-22, 2002)

Day after tomorrow - Tom Waits
Comments taken from: www.tomwaitssupplement.com

Cool4sms Firefox Εxtension

18/December 2006: Λόγω αλλαγής του website της υπηρεσίας cool4u, με την οποία δεν είναι συμβατή η έκδοση 1 του cool4sms firefox extension, δεν λειτουργεί η αποστολή sms μέσω του extension. Ελπίζω να φτιάξω σύντομα κάποια νεώτερη έκδοση.

Για όσους έχουν συνδρομή με την otenet, μπορούν να ενεργοποιήσουν την υπηρεσία cool4u (http://cool4u.otenet.gr/gr/) η οποία επιτρέπει την αποστολή 20 sms ημερησίως (250 το μήνα) ~ δωρεάν. Αυτό το extension επιτρέπει την αυτοματοποίηση της διαδικασίας, προσφέροντας διαχείριση contacts, αποθήκευση account information (στον firefox), αποστολή sms, save/load sms etc.

v 1.0 - (for Windows* & Linux**)
install from here or (offline: see above)
alternately, install from host.sk

** on Linux tested on Firefox 2.0 (get suse)
* on Windows tested on Firefox 1.5 - 2.0 (but should work with previous versions)

Σημ: Προς το παρόν δεν υπάρχει μηχανισμός ελέγχου του αριθμού των sms που επιτρέπονται.

Για bugs κτλ, καντε comment σ` αυτή τη σελίδα.

September 1st

Click to enlarge
Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images
Edited by Mparmpedas

Ipokrisia

"Sir Bob Geldof, in contrast, praised the work of the Gates foundation and hailed Gates as the world's most important philanthropist. " - source

"Rolling stones play for Bill Clinton" - source

"U2 party with Clinton" - source

So much hypocrisy you can`t even be ironic. The "greatest" philanthropist one that has so much money that his grand-grand-grand children won`t be able to spend. Greatest than the one who can afford two meals and shares one, even though the last is a case of self-sacrificing. On the rest, no comment is necessary.

Και πόσο αρμόζουν οι στίχοι του Τζιμάκου:

Με ένα ρεφραίν
κάνω το χρέος του κι εγώ
τραγουδώ
για αυτούς που πεινάνε

Υπάρχουνε παιδάκια
που δεν έχουνε φαί
ούτε πικάπ
ν' ακούνε μουσική

Δεν θέλω λεφτά
never
τραγουδάω δωρεάν
για μισό κιλό κοκαΐνη

Στείλτε αποφάγια,
ξεροκόμματα μπιζού
είναι το AIDS της Αφρικής
οργή Θεού

Όλοι μαζί με μια κιθάρα
Πλούσιοι φτωχοί, κουτσοί στραβοί σε μια παπάρα
Αμερικανάκια, προβατάκια COMSOMOL
φιλανθρωπία με ναρκωτικά και ροκ εντ ρολ

Να γίνει το ροκ
immediately
σαν τον Ερυθρό Σταυρό
τα φρικιά, αδελφές νοσοκόμες

Απ' την Αγιά Βαρβάρα
here
μέχρι το Κονέκτικατ
Ο Μάικλ Τζάκσον, ο Χατζής, ο Αραφάτ

Κι αν είμαι ροκ μη με φοβάσαι
προσαρμόζομαι να με λυπάσαι
νηστικό αρκούδι δεν χορεύει, δεν μπορεί
πρέπει να φάει για ν' αγοράσει μουσική

Τζίμης Πανούσης, USA for marketing

Thanasis Papakonstantinou Live, 2006

Thanasis Papakonstantinou
Live in Athens , June 2006.
Pictures here.

Roger Waters European Tour 2006

You can find some pictures
from the concert here.