Archive for January 2006

After avoiding exim4 for such a long time, finally I have to deal with it. New machine installs postfix by default, but there are many custom configuration that was done inside my old exim3, so I guess using exim4 was a bit easier, and give it a chance. I was wrong. exim4 is powerful, but I find the new configuration a bit hard to grasp, especially after Debian’s major overhaul. It is very flexible, yet difficult to trace.

Being upset (because I’m short of time), I attempted to search for some crash course, and finally found one that saved my day — it deals with exim4 + spamassassin + clamav + virtual domain aliases, in a step by step way. Exactly 100% what I need.

Finally, my machine is back after replacing harddisk (which is reached its normal life cycle) with a new one. I end up installing Ubuntu after a series of accidents — I downloaded Debian netinst CD and burned it, yet after reaching data center and inserting new CD into machine, it simply becomes a Ubuntu CD! Still not investigated the reason yet, but my first impression told me I might have burnt the wrong ISO image. Anyway, this accident isn’t so bad — now I have more reason to test the ubuntu server version.

Perhaps quite a lot of web apps using PHP aren’t so compatible with PHP5, so have to downgrade to PHP 4.x after discovering some web apps simply won’t work with PHP5. Most importantly, I don’t have the time for debugging.

After being bombarded with file fetching clients (like Netant and something like that), I decided to replace vsftpd with pure-ftpd. No, I didn’t mean vsftpd isn’t good, actually it has been robust and secure enough to serve files for a long time. I just want to see if some other ftp servers can do that as well. Besides, I want to test the ftp UTF8 support documented in RFC 2640, and see if it can indeed serve localized greeting messages and file names. Sadly ubuntu/debian version of pure-ftpd doesn’t compile with localization by default

[2006-01-03 16:53 Edit: pure-ftpd doesn't have RFC 2640 support at all, though there exists a patch for this purpose.]

According to MathWorld, the 43^th Mersenne prime is found to be 2^30402457-1, making it both the largest Mersenne prime as well as the largest known prime. And the sweet thing is, the result is verified on X’mas.

(For those who don’t know: Mersenne primes are in form of 2^P-1, where P is a positive integer.)

I always feel that joining those concrete research effort (like GIMPS on searching Mersenne prime) is far more meaningful than things like SETI@home which doesn’t even know if the target of research exists (yes, extra terristrial life form likely exists, but would they broadcast their existance?) or cracking RC5 encryption while everybody knows it’s crackable with sufficient computing power.

訂閱了路透社的科學版時看到的。路透社這篇報導說：有監察組織投訴，在 Wall Street Journal 賣整版的 Viagra 廣告可能會引致性傳染病機會增加。當時心想，這個 Viagra 字在垃圾電郵中是見得多了，不過為何用途那麼像「偉哥」呢？於是在 google 找一找……果然估計沒錯。Viagra 就是「偉哥」的正式英文名。我現在才知是否太遲？

再找一找，呵。原來它在不少地方已經失了專利，原因在於申請專利之前不少國家生產的藥早就有了「偉哥」的有效成分，雖然用途是原創的，但藥物本身不是原創，當然不能有專利。還是美國公司，絕對該打。

想一想也覺得有趣：如果在香港的報紙賣整版的偉哥廣告，版面上寫了大大隻的「重振雄風」會有甚麼後果？我很想看看之後傳媒、輿論和政府會有多混亂……

太累了，本來是想整晚在街外過通宵，到第二天早上才回家的，但結果是回到家，看完一套影片後反而精神了，現在也睡不了。寫點東西吧。

昨晚本來想乘一架平時少坐的車回家，但一到廣東道見到人山人海才想起封了路，根本就沒有車可以到尖沙咀區。自己笨，沒辦法，唯有依照巴士站的指示，到另一個巴士站乘車；人已經夠累了，還要步行多 15 分鐘，幸好環境舒服很多，不像尖沙咀鬧市那樣擠擁，不然不知會不會半途倒地。

廣東道好像有間店鋪 (叫 Cantonyama?)，因為很久沒留意那裏所以不知是否新開張；不過除夕夜找幾個銅管樂手在路邊吹一些頗經典的樂曲，也吸引到一批人圍觀。(原諒我吧，那部垃圾 E680i 就只能拍這種質素的相而己)

只是行經中港城勾起些不好的回憶；上次和朋友到中山，感覺根本不是一班人，而好像是我孤零零一個人，剛巧和她們整班人同路似的，那晚在中山住又整晚被蟻咬，沒有睡好覺；在中港城下船，步行去車站時覺得很難受，即使到了現在，還被這種記憶束縳着自己，新年是新年了，但對我來說，暫時似乎還是「哦，又一天了」這種感覺。