VirtualWolf's New Writeups

PowerBook G5 (thing)

2006-02-01T09:47:12Z

The PowerBook G5 is the mythical release of Apple's PowerBook range utilising IBM's G5 processor, otherwise known as the PowerPC 970.

Ever since the Power Mac G5 was released in mid-2003, at speeds greatly above what the G4-based machines -- laptops and desktops alike -- were running at, Mac users were anxiously awaiting a portable version of the G5 processor for use in a PowerBook.

With the G4 not scaling as well as initially hoped, and with the release of Intel's Pentium-M processor (a low-power, high-performance processor based originally on the Pentium III), the PowerBook's performance began to look down-right anaemic next to the competition from the x86 side of the fence, especially considering the PowerBooks were top-of-the-range computers, the most powerful Apple laptops available.

Rumours abounded of a low-power version of the G5, and the fact that the G4 chip appeared in a laptop a year and a half after it was introduced in the Power Mac gave…

Grand Admiral Thrawn (person)

2002-08-18T07:58:01Z

Grand Admiral Thrawn was introduced into the Star Wars universe in Timothy Zahn's Heir To The Empire novel. He plays a rather major role in the trilogy, and in many other Star Wars novels as well.

Description

Thrawn is an alien, of the race called the Chiss, which hail from the Unknown Regions. They are definitely humanoid, with arms and legs in the right positions and the right proportions, but their pale blue skin, shimmering blue-black hair, and glowing red eyes mark them as distinctly not human.

History

Mitth'raw'nuruodo, or 'Thrawn' as he calls his core name, first came into contact with the Empire over half a century ago, when Senator Palpatine was setting up an ambush for the Outbound Flight Project. Palpatine's ships were annhiliated, and only one survived because Thrawn wanted to interrogate them. On board the surviving ship was the taskforce's leader, Kinman Doriana, one of Palpatine's top advisors. He persuded Thrawn that the Outbound…

Shada D'ukal (person)

2002-07-29T08:52:57Z

Shada D'ukal was first introduced in Timothy Zahn's Heir To The Empire trilogy, but only as a very minor character, a bodyguard of a smuggler named Mazzic. In the Specter Of The Past/Vision Of The Future duo, however, Zahn fleshes out her character and background considerably, becoming a rather major part of these two books.

She was born on the planet Emberlene, which had been decimated many years earlier in a massive space and ground attack. Life was very harsh, and death and disease and hunger were a given. An organisation called the Mistryl shadow guards, an elite group of exquisitely trained warrior women, commissioned personally by the Eleven Elders of the People hired their services out to the oppressed and powerless of the galaxy, in return for money to keep Emberlene alive. Shada joined the Mistryl when she was young, where she became a highly trained covert agent, doing the Mistryl's bidding on countless planets. On Tatooine she helped the Rebellion get the technical…

.htaccess (thing)

2002-07-11T09:39:56Z

To password-protect a directory using .htaccess files, do the following:

First, you have to use the htpasswd utility to create a new password file (somewhere outside the Apache root directory!). The basic syntax is htpasswd -n passwordfile username. (Type htpasswd for a brief list of options, or the htpasswd manpage for the whole lot).

% htpasswd -c ~/virtualwolf_admin_passwd virtualwolf

You'll be prompted for a password. Then create your .htaccess file in the folder you wish to password-protect, and put the following text into it:

AuthType Basic AuthUserFile $PATH AuthName $LOGIN require valid-user satisfy All

(Replacing "$PATH" and "$LOGIN" with the path to the password file you created above and the login, respectively). That's it! You'll be prompted for a login and password when you try to access the directory that the…

Macintosh File System (thing)

2002-05-05T02:05:59Z

The Macintosh File System is the original disk format used by the first Macs ever introduced. It was a non-hierarchical FS, meaning that you couldn't nest folders within each other. In open and save dialogs, all the folders disappeared and you were presented with one huge list of all the files on your computer.

MFS was obsoleted with the introduction of HFS in System 3.0 in January 1986 which, as the name suggests, is a hierarchical filesystem whereby you can nest folders to an unlimited depth if you so desire.

Simple ad blocking with hosts (idea)

2001-10-27T08:31:13Z

/me smacks Xenex

You forgot the Mac OS! :P

Under Mac OS X, being a *NIX variant, the hosts file is located at /etc/hosts. Under Mac OS X 10.2, lookupd is configured to look in /etc/hosts by default, however if you're running 10.0 or 10.1, /etc/hosts/ is completely ignored unless you're in single user mode. To get around this, you have to edit your /etc/hosts file as per normal, then type the command sudo niload < /etc/hosts. This reads /etc/hosts and puts it into the NetInfo database.

If you're running Mac OS 9, however, it's called "Hosts" and is located in the Preferences folder inside your System Folder. To use your Hosts file, open up the TCP/IP control panel, make sure that the User Mode is set to Advanced, click the Use Hosts File button, and select the Hosts file.

Actually, I just remembered something: when you select the Hosts file above, you can choose the file from anywhere (it doesn't have to been located in System Folder:Pref…