Ju Rao's Homepage: Free Computer Books

Books and tutorials on just about anthing computer-related. Looks to be pretty much the most unbelieveable resource ever.

Read more at www.maththinking.com/bo...

World Sunlight Map

This shows where the sunlight is currently striking the earth in real time.

Read more at www.die.net/earth/

C Programming Tutorial

This is sick, the K & R book on C programming. SICK!

Read more at www.iu.hio.no/~mark/CTu...

Hamachi : Download

This is perhaps the coolest utility I have run across today.  It allows you to set up a virtual VPN network between two or more computers anywhere.  I tested it out, and it works BEAUTIFULLY!

Read more at www.hamachi.cc/download

NuFW An enterprise grade authenticating firewall

This is a project that provides a set of modules (it appears) that allows Netfilter -- Linux's built-in firewall -- to authenticate users using ldap, dbm, system, and plaintext. Looks pretty strong. Only issue is that windows and linux systems (the only ones supported) need to install a client.

Read more at www.nufw.org/index.php3...

CORE FORCE - About

This is perhaps the best thing I have seen for Windowz desktops so far this year.  Take a look at the following:

http://force.coresecurity.com/index.php?module=base&page=about

It is a link to the "about" page for a new free product called Core Force.  Basically is a firewall for XP, but in contrast to existing firewalls that just protect your network, this protects your applications as well.  I recently wrote about using windows to reduce the privileges on your applications so that damage caused by viruses and spyware would be severely limited.  This imposes similar limits without the need to reduce privileges.  To protect applications, it provides a framework of software file path and registry path profiles that are developed by security experts.  Basically if your application is being made to do something it wasn't designed to do, this program will stop it.

Read more at force.coresecurity.com/...

For some reason I am fascinated with treasure-hunts. Since this blog is partly for me to dump stuff I think is interesting, I am going to post it here:

http://www.treasurehuntpartygame.com/thunt.htm

Need to check up on this product, but it looks interesting, not so much for parties, but just for getting the imagination going, and creating general fun.

Schnibitz

First post

Guess I should explain the "glass barrier" thing. A psychologist named Martin Seligman did an experiment where he put a barracuda in a tank with a mackerel, then placed a glass barrier between the two. The two fish would bump up against the glass and eventually get used to the glass being there. At that point Seligman pulled the glass out, and neither fish went past where the glass barrier used to be. The term he used is "learned helplessness." The aim is to post ideas that break through the non-existent barriers that bind us.