the german

Profile

Name: Unknown

Alias: The German

Power: Manipulation of magnetic fields

Overview

Little is known about the German. He first catches the attention of the Company when he commits a string of bank robberies, most of them using brute forces, including ripping off the vault doors. Later, after escaping from Level 5, he, along with Knox, Flint and Jessy (Peter), attempts to rob another bank, where he gets killed by Knox over an argument.

Closest ‘Marvel’ match

magneto

It is quite obvious that The German is a nod to Magneto, one of the most prominent characters from the Marvel Universe. A Jewish Holocaust survivor, Magneto grew up hating his oppressors. Since the discovery of his powers, he considers mutants (like himself) as the next step in the evolution of man. Thus, began his war on humanity, the war for mutant rights. Initially it was for dominance, though with time, it became more a battle for survival.

Often considered a “bad guy”, Erik ‘Magnus’ Lehnsherr (real name being Max Eisenhardt) is one of the most powerful Marvels. He was once the ruler of Genosha, the first mutant nation, before the country was attacked by anti-mutant activists (with Sentinels IIRC), an act which destroyed millions of mutants.

Battle

Verdict: Not at all a good idea

Though the extent of The German’s powers have never been explored much, he seems to be quite average in terms of Marvel mutant power ranges. Mangeto, on the other hand, is one of the most powerful Marvels in the Marvel universe. In terms of raw power, he can lift a cargo freighter weighing 30,000 tons, 50 feet into the air from a distance of 300 feet away. He has a genius level intellect, being extremely knowledgeable and practised in genetic manipulation and engineering. He uses his magnetic powers quite effectively, using force-fields, enhancing his strength to Class 100 levels, and assembling complex machinery with precision using his powers, and sometimes, all at the same time.

knox

Profile

Name: Benjamin Washington

Alias: Knox

Power: Enhanced strength (fuelled by fear in those around him)

Overview

Knox is portrayed as a sadistic criminal. He seems to have turned to the wrong side of the law quite early in his youth. He is seen working as part of an organized syndicate, in most instances.

Closest ‘Marvel’ match

sabretooth

In my opinion, there is no “close” match for Knox in Marvel. One potential candidate I can think of, who comes a little close, would be Victor Creed, a.k.a Sabretooth. Like Knox, Sabretooth is sadistic and has enhanced strength. Though he usually prefers to work alone, he has often teamed up with other villains, notably the Brotherhood of Mutants (the Mystique-led wing, if I remember correctly).

Battle

Verdict: Not a good idea

Sabretooth will possibly toy with him for a while, before tearing him to pieces. Romulus is one of the few people in the Marvel universe who can scare Sabretooth. So Knox doesn’t have much of a chance here. However, let us assume there are others in the area who are scared. I am not sure if Knox’s strength scales with the amount of fear generated in the vicinity, but I am pretty sure that Sabretooth’s healing factor can compensate. In short, Knox is dead.

As an introduction, here’s a list of Heroes characters whom I will be comparing with their Marvel counterparts.

• Knox
• The German
• Stephen Canfield
• Eric Doyle
• D.L. Hawkins
• Niki Sanders
• Micah Sanders
• Monica Dawson
• Tracy Strauss
• Mohinder Suresh
• Meredith Gordon
• Hiro Nakamura
• Adam Munroe
• Matt Parkman
• Maury Parkman
• Robert Bishop
• Elle Bishop
• Daniel Linderman
• Eden McCain
• Claude Rains
• Candice Wilmer
• Daphne Millbrook
• Maya Herrera
• Usutu
• Hana Gietleman
• Isaac Mendez
• Ted Sprague
• Claire Bennet
• Arthur Petrelli
• Angela Petrelli
• Nathan Petrelli
• Peter Petrelli
• Molly Walker
• The Haitian
• Gabriel Gray / Sylar

Bye-bye spam!

Of course, I need to review mails in the queue periodically to make sure I am not about to purge valid mails, but considering how spam mails seem to bypass most spam filters, I feel this solution is more resilient that blacklisting (but yeah, not fully foolproof).

Using: qmail + courier_imap + procmail + RoundCube
And yeah, currently have to white-list by adding entries manually in .procmailrc, but will get off my ass and hack the RoundCube interface to GUI-fy this.

[Click on the thumbnail to see them full-sized]

So, I am starting Project Need For Speed. The aim? To configure a Linux desktop that boots in a jiffy (not setting any concrete goals here) and is light on the resources. No, its not Arch Linux for me. I need everything to be just download-able and installable/configurable. That, and my love for Ubuntu, drove me to try Debian as my distro of choice.

I debootstrap-ed a new partition with Debian Sid and installed a 2.6.26 kernel and pppoeconf onto it. Switching to that now.

Watch this space for regular updates on this!

Update 1:
Xfce4 desktop w/ GDM auto-login. Desktop ready to use in 21 seconds!!! That’s good progress! Now starts the part where I add in useful stuff and pretty them up.

Update 2:
Switched to E17. 16 seconds!! And the thing looks damn beautiful! Expect screenshots

The Good

• Fast. Blazingly fast. Blows the compeition clean out of the water (IE7/8 would hit escape velocity)
• Clean, slick (white) interface. Typical Google-ish style. Nice and easy-to-use.
• Open source!
• Larger real-estate. Title-bar and menu-bar done away with.
• (Possibly) The ability to kill individual scripts/tabs via the “task manager” (haven’t tried this out yet)

The Bad

• Not available on Linux/Mac (yet)
• Per-tab memory consumption is larger (though for my typical usage, the total seems to be lesser)
• Extensions
• Themes

The Ugly

• Have you seen the EULA?!!! (this has been corrected now)
• Security. Where the hell is my security? (http://www.p2pnet.net/story/16889)
• Anti-phishing (not sure if its there in Chrome)
• Google (post pending on my long-standing distrust of Google, and yes, I do use their search a lot)

The Meh

• Separate process per tab - Mixed bag. Task-manager : good. Overhead : bad.
• Mozilla: “How could you do this to us?!”

The Random

• Was fastest browser for a whole day (or two?) before Mozilla came out with benchmark results that showed the Firefox 3.1 nightly build to be faster than Chrome (or was it just V8 vs TraceMonkey?)
• Linux users can build PARTS of it. x-( . Well, screw you Google! We will stay loyal to Mozilla! (of course, only until you release the Linux version )
• Most of the ‘bad’ and the ‘ugly’ will (probably) get fixed in subsequent releases, but some things won’t change.
• What are they planning?