OMG, Jaunty ate my Hauwei
Since I didn't have that much time to build everything from scratch anymore, I ditched Gentoo on my laptop some two years ago and I've been a Ubuntu user ever since. A satisfied Ubuntu user. I actually first installed the thing when Funky Flounder was around (or whatever the F name was at the time), and just upgraded to Gutsy, Hasty, and Irky (or whatever those names were) virtually hassle-free.
Fetch 'em the Geeky Way
Now suppose you found a web page that is really a pageful of links, say some PDFs.
A sharing soul decided to offer some documents off her web site, so these are nicely embedded in the (X)HTML code. They could be interesting, even helpful, but you have that gut reaction that clicking through each and every one of them is not an option.
Knock knock
It seems I was the only one not to know about something that requires a gigantic effort in self-discipline to restrain the geeky part of me from drooling all over the keyboard: port knocking.
Now, what is port knocking, in case you missed the train just like I did?
As Martin Krzywinski himself puts it, port knocking is a method of establishing a connection to a networked computer that has no open ports.
Before a connection is established, ports are opened using a port knock sequence, which is a series of connection attempts to closed ports.
