Securitron Doom/Linux Blog.

 

Thursday, 07 July 2005. 08:49. London Terrorist Attacks.

There have been terrorist explosions in London. A bomb has gone off on a Double Decker bus. There are at least 90 casualties and at least 2 dead, 9 hurt in one blast. There were 6 explosions altogether and it is believed to be an attack by Al Queda. Soldiers are guarding Buckingham palace and there are soldiers in the streets. The situation is coming under control and there should be more news coming through the media. What do you think about the terrorists doing such things? What would you do to them if you could get your hands on these cowardly people.? Train Stations in America are increasing security to make sure that the commuters there are not a target as well. I hope that America does not fall victim to a similar attack. The explosions have occurred in Aldgate in a tube station as well as the bombs that went off on the bus at the Russel Sq station. London has hosted the Live 8 concert and has of course had quite a lot of people traveling through the area. Prime Minister Tony Blair is planning to travel to London to get a report on the situation, then return to complete the G8 meeting. He wants the meeting to continue in his absence, which is the best thing in the situation. The attacks should not interrupt the meeting. The blasts are believed to coincide with the opening of the aforementioned G8 meeting, but they will not succeed in stopping such an important meeting of the world leaders. The London subway system has been shut down following the cowardly attacks, there are believed to be 95 injuries and one fatality.

There is currently a rescue operation ongoing at Kings Cross station and there was a bus destroyed at Tavastok Sq. About 2 minutes walk from Russel Sq. The top was torn off a Double Decker bus. It is believed that some unexploded devices have been discovered which will help with the forensic investigation. A previously unknown group related to Al Queda is claiming responsibility for the attacks. But this is not definite yet. There will be more definite news about this as more information is released. The 6th confirmed explosion has occurred at Lester Sq. An explosion has also been reported at Liverpool St. Thankfully there is currently no sign of an attack in the United States as yet. I hope there is no similar attack in NYC or Washington DC. Security has been improved in the Subways in America and this will help the commuters feel very safe. They are not planning to increase the terror alert level, but increasing security is nevertheless a sensible and prompt response. It has been confirmed that there were 7 attacks in London. From 08:49 to 10:49. Al Arabia has said that a jihad cell of Al Queda has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Two hospitals have reported 185 people have been wounded in the attacks. London Schools are keeping the children inside until it is reported that is safe to send them home. The subway will be shut down for the rest of the day, which will strand a lot of people in the city. But it has been said that there are so many security cameras in London, that it is possible that they could have captured footage that could assist in capturing the bombers.

The modus operandi of terrorists is to cause fright and panic amongst the general population, but Londoners are generally behaving with calm considering the circumstances. The Olympic bid for the 2012 Olympic Games has gone to London. What a great result for this great city. A bit cold and rainy but they will be a good host. For the games of the 30th Olympiad. The security will of course be pretty beefed up for the duration of the Olympic Games. An Islamic website has threatened Danish and Italian countries if they do not stop their support for the Iraqi war. Attacks have been threatened in those countries unless they comply with the demands of the terrorists. I am sure that they will have stepped up security by then. Londoners will not be bowed by cowardly acts like this. They survived the horrors of the Blitz and the IRA attacks so they will survive this, which has been called an attempt at mass murder by the Mayor of London. The 'people' behind this should be subjected to the worst possible tortures available on Earth.

The terrorists behind this are just as bad as the terrorists behind September 11. If you were a Londoner, what would you like to do to them? I have a few ideas myself. Somethings are better left unsaid though, this is a family website, so use your imagination. Something like the Hell scenes in Event Horizon would suffice. The problem now is that the evening rush hour is coming and there is practically no transport at the moment. But the incredibly resilient British people will manage just as they did during the Blitz. It has just been reported that 300 people are being treated in hospitals, I hope this number does not increase any further. But we are lucky that they did not use any Nerve Agents like they did with the Sarin nerve gas attacks in japan. Thank god for that. Traces of explosives have been found in the London Subway Stations, which again, will help with a forensic investigation. I hope they catch these terrorists and their suffering is unmatched in history. There have been reports of explosives sniffer dogs on the Washington DC subway system which is of course a good reaction to this targeting of innocent people going about their daily business. There are no plans for President George Bush to return to Washington DC, he must feel the same way that Tony Blair does. That the meeting must go on, and you should not let terror attacks stop such a very important meeting, which is trying to help the problem of African hunger and global warming. The sort of people that perpetrate these acts of utter barbarity do not care at all about the suffering of innocent civilians.

It has just been reported that 45 people have been killed and 1000 injuries are reported. It could have been much worse, but I certainly am not saying that this is not a very horrifying attack. I hope this does not happen again, but every time we think that a terror attack is not imminent, one comes out of nowhere. Certainly I hope this does not happen in Australia. We have had our anti-terrorist troops training in Sydney, so I hope this attack is not repeated here. Security in all cities will have to be stepped up, and as was reported on FOX news, there was signs of this in Washington DC. The live feed on FOX news, is showing the devastation wreaked by the blasts, I cannot believe it has happened in London, you usually see this kind of thing in Baghdad, not in Great Britain. The irony is that the London Underground was a safe haven during the Blitz in World War 2, now they are the site of much death and destruction. The terror organizations behind this are targeting Russel Sq because it is the home of the financial district of London. They are trying to damage the economy of Great Britain but the country will fight back and not be stopped by an attack like this.

Scotland Yard are having a news conference on the disaster, and are thanking everyone caught up in the tragedy for their great response to such a shocking incident. It is now believed that the bus bombing at Russel Sq, was the result of a suicide bombing. Someone was seen handling a suspicious package. There are believed to be more than 50 fatalities, but this number is not definite as of yet. As I said in the last paragraph, this is the sort of thing that you see all the time in Iraq, not in a civilized liberal country like Britain. Now the war on terror is back on the agenda at the G8 meeting, dwarfing world hunger and global warming. The French officials have sent soldiers to reinforce the security at the channel tunnel. This may help stop the terrorists moving from England to France. But we will wait and see. If there is a terror cell in Britain, then they could move over Europe if they are not stopped. Now thankfully that the officials have responded so fast to this tragedy, they will be very aware and alert to any suspicious behavior. The bombs used on the buses are believed to be less than 10 pounds of explosives. And could easily fit in a rucksack or briefcase. It only takes about a few pounds of plastic explosives to bring down a airliner so it would not take much explosives to destroy a bus.

The good thing is that the commuters are making their way to work for the day after the disaster and they are trying to get on with their normal lives. If you stopped your normal routine and cowered at home, then the terrorists have won. You should not let them bother you and interrupt your normal life then they are achieving what they set out to do in the first place. I hope they catch the people involved in this attack.

There are 6000 security cameras in the UK and the security camera tapes are the greatest hope in securing the capture of the terrorists behind this attack. Tourists booked on flights from Australia to England have canceled their flights and have had their tickets refunded. I hope this does not signal a victory for terrorism, although I know the same thing happened after September 11 and tourism did return to normal afterwards. Prime Minister John Howard has signed a condolence book at the British High Commission in Canberra expressing the sympathy and condolences of all Australian people. ''Evil will never cower a free people'' he wrote and I could not agree more. All of us are very sympathetic to the victims of the disaster considering that we have lost Australians in the Bali bombings and we understand the feelings of the Londoners. Sydney stations have increased security and officials are creating a mass evacuation plan for the Sydney transit system. I hope we never need to use it at all. There was one scare in Australia where a person threatened to blow up a Tram. I should have known that some idiot would try something like this.

A disaster like this always brings out the idiots. There are a lot of crazy people in this world, The Bali bombing has shown how insane this world is getting. A person has been on the news who was in the Bali bombing and was caught up in the subway bombing as well. It makes all of the worries in your own life seem insignificant in comparison. This is quite a long post, but I knew that all of the other things I wanted to post were not as important as such a shocking incident. It reminds us that terror is everywhere and we cannot be complacent.

I have updated my linux_configs page with a newer version of my .bashrc file and this has many very useful functions for the seasoned GNU/Linux user. This file works best with a lot of memory considering the amount of environment variables and functions in this file. But it is a very comprehensive and useful file for BASH 2.05 and up. There is now a new page to accompany my Linux page. Linux Links.. This is a new page to accompany the existing Linux information I have and provides more links to useful resources on the Internet.

The Hurricane Dennis is moving towards the Florida & Alabama coast and into Mississippi. At 11:24 ET it is approaching Daphne Alabama, with very high winds and very high rainfall. Residents are urged to leave now or bunker down in shelters and wait out the storm. People who are staying in the area though are urged to leave. WEAR TV is showing incredible images of the storm and I just hope that there is not too much damage wreaked by this Hurricane. Hurricane Andrew caused quite a lot of damage, so I hope this one does not take too many lives.

The British people will observe 2 minutes of silence on Thursday to as a sign of respect to the victims of the London terror attacks. The group that initially claimed responsibility for the attacks may not have been behind it at all. I hope they do find out who did this, they may have been behind the Madrid bombing as well.

I was using Windows 2000 recently and I was just using the basic GUI and it kept freezing up and slowing down endlessly. And this was with 512MB of RAM. And Windows 2000 is meant to be a better OS than Windows '98 but it does not show any promise right now does it? 512MB of RAM and it was still slowing down and pausing, I wonder why Microsoft people still think that it is still the superior OS over GNU/Linux. It cannot even run as smoothly as Mandrake Linux or Debian. The Windows 2000 GUI does not load as fast as the Mandrake Linux 10.0 system running Window Maker 0.9.10.

I recently tried out the Linspire 5.0 live CD and it loaded up on a Pentium 4 PC with 512MB of RAM and a Network card, and the network settings were auto detected and I was browsing the web as well as the contents of my USB key drive. Very impressive indeed. I prefer this to Windows 2000. It comes with the Open Office suite as well as the Mozilla browser. Why would you want to run Windows if Linux is so good? I have my laptop setup with the larswm Window Manager and it works really well. I used bsetbg to draw a nice gradient for a background and a lovely translucent mouse cursor. I downloaded a sample .Xdefaults file which sets up my X terms to have a black background and anti-aliased text.

Just like this:

bsetroot -gradient sunkendiagonalgradientbevel2 -from rgb:1/0/2 -to rgb:2/3/1c &
Eterm -g 100x40 -e bash &
larsclock &

I have started a community project to create the best level possible with the Alien Vendetta textures. I have uploaded a level you can download here: Download map.. This map will be uses the features of the Team TNT Boom engine so it can have a wide variety of effects. I want someone to do something with this map, I would prefer if someone builds a map like AV MAP25. I want hordes of Barons and Imps. A real cannon fodder map with a lot of infighting and intense fights. Just like AV MAP25. And Plutonia MAP32.

Linux coolness. Try this with a windows box! 52 days uptime. Windows can barely manage 4 hours in practice. I love it when a Windows 2000 box locks up while thinking about something and then finally gets around to doing what it was trying to do.

We have finally got a good rainfall in Australia. Too much in some places, but not to complain though when we have been through such a long drought. Warragamba dam near Sydney is still about 40% full, so we still need more rain to fill it up.

The Japanese vessel Chikyu Maru is going to drill a hole through the Earths crust to the Mantle of the Earth. Quite an achievement, but more realistic than the movie the Core starring Hillary Swank. That was the most unrealistic movie ever made. In real life they are going to drill 6.2 miles down. Much less than the distance to the core. But this will be quite a technical achievement even without unobtainium.

Who else thinks that Big Brother is getting out of hand? The show has been going for many years and has gone down the proverbial toilet. The house-mates are just walking around naked and sexually harassing the female inmates, yet nothing seems to be done about this at all.

The show consists of discussions about perverted sexual fantasies, guys stroking each others legs, while eying each other with longing stares, and guys making pelvic thrusts towards the women. You even get to see them in the shower. Pity they don't do it in the shower, I would love to see some more hot sex on this show, it might even be worth watching then. But they did not have anything like this when I was young.

I think this show is quite perverted, but if like me you like a bit of titillation, then you will get it here. But it does not reflect real life at all, and does not provide any real entertainment value for any intellectual amount. Anyone who watches this show for every episode must be totally lacking in intelligence and education. But all free to air channels will be like this soon, I say enjoy what little remains before it goes to Hell. I hope the regular viewers enjoy their show, they are only contributing to the downfall of society. Some people are horrified by this program with the things that go on, but the stupid people are the ones who keep it going. Anyone who votes by SMS or phone is wasting their money on a load of crap. But why worry about this, I do not need to worry if there is always something more intellectual to enjoy.

There is always the Discovery Channels for more intellectual stimulation. Even Jerry Springer is more intellectual than the stupid Big Brother show.

Any way, in other news, I am starting on a new project for Doom2 entitled citadel of suffering. This will be a new map for Doom2 using the Alien Vendetta textures to create a awesome map for the discerning gamer. I have created some cool new sprites including the freaky frog impaled on a stake.

Get the files here: Zipfile.

I have just downloaded the Axel F remix of the Crazy Frog ring-tone and it is quite funny but I will be happy to see the back of that frog.

They are thinking of adding another free to air channel, but that may not happen at all. What would they put on it? Maybe they could show documentaries and movies, something more intellectual than naked men and perverted sexual discussions. In America they have many free to air TV channels, with some channels offering multicultural content. Not so in Australia though, we are stuck with only 5 channels, And only one multicultural channel.

SBS (Multicultural Programming) Sometimes even some Pr0n.

Channel TEN

Channel Nine.

Channel Seven

And the ABC.

Not a wide selection, on the weekends on free to air television, there is mainly just sport, with nothing else to watch at all. At least FOX 8 has the Simpsons and Scariest places on Earth. FOX news channel is also very good, Greta van Susteren is one good presenter.
Much better than the presenters on the Today show on channel nine. If we had another free to air television channel in Australia, it would provide more variety You could have more documentary channels and movies.

Big Brother has shown how bad television will get in the future, so why put up with this repugnant programming. Taking it off the air would be the best move ever. You could replace it with any other show and you would have better entertainment. The people who actually vote out people on this show must be the dumbest people ever. Who would actually spend money and vote on a heap of trash like this?

There is a new show coming out that will be the reality show version of School of Rock, but this will actually be cool, unlike Big Brother. It will be good fun to vote on this show. It would actually be worth the money. Or rock star INXS. They need a new member of their band following the unfortunate demise of their previous member.

I found a partition on my laptop left over from an old installation of Mandrake Linux 10. it is 2.2GB in size so I will put all of my music and other files on there to save space on /. What a find! This is like finding $10 in your clothes in the wash. Very useful. I know you might ask how I could miss 2Gigabytes of space, but you know, I was busy with my system, until I decided to load up QTParted and check the partitions on my laptop and I found the partition. There was also a 233MB Linux formatted partition left over from that installation as well, I might use that for storing extra files.

Cartoon Network's Adult Swim has a new look! They have the logo in Katakana Characters now. In romaji it is adaruto-suima E,g Adult Swim. Very good shows too, they had Initial D and Inyu-Yasha. Inyu Yasha reminds me of Tenchi Muyo but is slightly better with the slightly evil lead character, the half demon guy with the dog ears.
¶ 7/11/2005 09:57:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post