Computer-Related Documents

John S. Denker

  1. A tutorial on how to set up your system to handle email with a modicum of security, including how to install qmail and how to integrate it with spamassassin.

  2. A discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. It's not fast, it's not smart, and it needs your help ... but it does clean the carpets.

  3. A paper on Image Segmentation and Recognition. This provides some useful insights as to how to normalize probabilities correction and why learning from examples should be considered a search through the space of all possible probability measures.

  4. A discussion about various schemes for encoding fancy characters in documents (especially HTML documents) and the cross-browser compatibility issues that raises. Also a discussion of the difference between a font and an encoding or a codepage.

  5. A discussion of color management and other digital imaging issues.

  6. A collection of papers on Virtual Private Networks, IPsec, and other computer network security issues.

  7. How to Get Started with IPv6 on Linux. This includes a discussion of how to form experimental, temporary, and/or private IPv6 addresses.

  8. A discussion of some of the weird things you might see on a 802.11 WiFi network. Also included are patches for certain wireless-card drivers, to make promiscuous mode work without causing duplication of packets -- which are sometimes a big problem for applications. The patches apply to the current drivers for Lucent WaveLAN and Proxim ORiNOCO (Atheros) cards.

  9. Instructions for cloning or mirroring a disk, i.e. making a bit-for-bit copy.

  10. Hard Disk Pinout for Laptops and Desktops (ATA or IDE)

  11. Some introductory-level notes on how to debug things like kernel panic, kernel oops, soft lockup, and hard lockup.

  12. A script to configure your DNS server to block traffic to ``advertising servers'' and the associated data file.

  13. An explanation of why you might get the message 
    unable to open display "....:10.0"
    when using X11 forwarding features of ssh.

  14. A handy calculator for arithmetic on dotted quads ... IP addresses, subnet masks, et cetera.

  15. My very own general-purpose desk calculator. My first exercise in using lex and yacc (aka bison).

  16. Some Suggestions for Documenting your Software. This includes a discussion of good versus bad comments and other elements of programming style.

  17. How to Clone a Record in a Database, Using Only SQL, Even When There Is a Unique Key.