Blog Archive: October 2012
Still more photo processing
I had intended to play around more with Capture One Pro 7 today, but somehow I didn't get round to it. Instead spent some time looking at DxO Optics Pro release 8, in particular with regard to the problems I have had with release 7. In summary: 7.5.4 no longer processes files on SMB file systems. This problem was transient in 7.5.4 and 7.5.5, but I haven't seen it at all on 8.0. Can't save processing settings.
90 seconds @Build: Its a great week for C++
A few hours ago I sat down to give a short teaser for my webcast talk this Friday. Here it is. Feel free to forward. (I dont think they believed me when I said I could keep it to under two minutes.) Filed under: C++, Microsoft, Software Development, Talks & Events
Time to Boot
Last weekend, my friend Andrés Monroy-Hernández pointed out something that I've been noticing as well. Although the last decade has seen a huge decrease in the time of it takes to boot, the same can not be said for the increasing powerful computer in my pocket that is my phone. As the graph indicates, I think my cross-over was around 2010 when I acquired an SSD for my laptop.
Doping in Professional Sports
I updated a 2006 essay of mine on the security issues around sports doping....
Dan Ariely on Dishonesty
Good talk, and I've always liked these animators....
Trying Capture One
By coincidence, also received mail from Phase One, advertising their new (I think) release of Capture One Pro 7, which does many of the same things that DxO Optics Pro does, though in this case the Pro is really in contrast to a non- Pro version. Again I get a free trial, this time 60 days, so I downloaded it and tried it out. Where's the documentation? There's a user guide for release 6, but all I can find for 7 is a Getting Started guide. A bit more searching found an online guide with precious few images, whose rendering upsets firefox, but which with a bit of effort explains what you have to do.
DxO 8: first impressions
DxO Optics Pro release 8 is now available, so I downloaded it to try it out. In brief: it works, and so far it seems that the problems I have seen in the past haven't shown up. But I haven't finished my checks yet. Instead, revisited some comparisons I did 3½ years ago, before I started using DxO. At the time I had two views that caused significant problems. Today I triednot for the first timeto process them with DxO, and this time I completed the task. Here are the comparisons with the base image, the best I got at the time, and what I got today with DxO: ...
Network disconnect insights
After yesterday's power failure, I noticed that my wireless Internet connection was no longer doing any cell hopping, to the point that I started looking at my reporting software. It took over 24 hours before it started again: Oct 28 09:02:51 nerd-gw ppp[1679]: tun0: IPCP: myaddr 118.209.12.68 hisaddr = 10.1.0.1 ... Oct 29 09:14:52 nerd-gw fstats: +CGREG 1 81E3 8FC8F2E And then, of course, I had another remote disconnect: Oct 29 16:52:14 nerd-gw ppp[1679]: tun0: LCP: deflink: RecvTerminateReq(3) state = Opened Oct 29 16:52:14 nerd-gw ppp[1679]: tun0: LCP: deflink: LayerDown Oct 29 16:52:14 nerd-gw ppp[1679]: tun0: LCP: deflink: SendTerminateAck(3) state = Opened Oct 29 16:52:14 nerd-gw ppp[1679]: tun0: LCP: deflink: State change Opened --> Stopping Roll on the radiation tower!
Finding an alternative to DxO
So far my experiences with DxO Optics Pro has been very frustrating. It's slower than anything I've seen, full of bugs, and the support people do everything they can to avoid fixing them. Now I can install a new version and pay more money, and the only mention of fixes is that the display bug I reported (they call it a feature) will not be fixed. So: what are the alternatives? The obvious (and free) one is Olympus Viewer 2. After a bit of investigation, discovered that I first needed to install a version 6 months old and then use that to install the latest version.
Detecting Fake Hurricane Photographs
A short tutorial here. Actually, it's good advice even if there weren't a hurricane....
AMD Announces Server Targeted ARM Part
I have been interested in, and writing about, microservers since 2007. Microservers can be built using any instruction set architecture but Im particularly interested in ARM processors and their application to server-side workloads. Today Advanced Micro Devices announced they are going to build an ARM CPU targeting the server market. This will be 4-core, 64 bit, more than 2Ghz part that is expected to sample in 2013 and ship in volume in early 2014. AMD is far from new to microserver market. In fact, much of my past work on microservers has been AMD-powered.
Protecting (and Collecting) the DNA of World Leaders
There's a lot of hype and hyperbole in this story, but here's the interesting bit: According to Ronald Kessler, the author of the 2009 book In the Presidents Secret Service, Navy stewards gather bedsheets, drinking glasses, and other objects the president has touchedthey are later sanitized or destroyedin an effort to keep would be malefactors from obtaining his genetic material....
The Future of C++: Live broadcast this Friday
In my talk on Friday, there will be announcements of broad interest to C++ developers on all compilers and platforms. Please help spread the word. The Future of C++ Friday, November 2, 2012 12:45pm (U.S. Pacific Time) This talk will give an update on recent progress and near-future directions for C++, both at Microsoft and [...]
DxO support: all your fault
My interaction with DxO support continues to be frustrating. They don't read the reports, and they continually blame the problems on my configuration that just meets the minimum requirements . They won't tell me why this is a problem with accessing files via SMB. Indeed, they don't know what that is: Please advise specifically what your issues are with access to shared (CIFS/SMB) file systems. Also please enlighten me as to the characteristics of these file systems, there are so many and I am personally unfamiliar with this specific terminology.
Scrambled display on hi-res monitor
I'm very happy with my new 2560×1440 monitor, but on three occasions now I've had a scrambled display when powering on: The first two cases were shortly after I got it, and the third was today. In each case I powered cycled it and it came up correctly, so I assume this is some kind of power-up race condition.
Coming to Boston today for finale of the Pirate Cinema tour
Yo, Boston! Today is the last day of my Pirate Cinema tour (after this, I'll be touring complete) and I'm wrapping it up in Boston, the 18th city in 6 weeks, where I'll be appearing at the Boston Book Festival, on a 4:15 panel with MT Anderson, Rachel Cohn, and Gabrielle Zevin. Come on out … [Read more]
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid from the Power Ranger Universe
Ika Origami....
Hacking TSA PreCheck
I have a hard time getting worked up about this story: I have X'd out any information that you could use to change my reservation. But it's all there, PNR, seat assignment, flight number, name, ect. But what is interesting is the bolded three on the end. This is the TSA Pre-Check information. The number means the number of beeps....
In Toronto today, Boston tomorrow
Hey, Toronto! It's my last night in town -- I'll be at Harbourfront's International Festival of Authors doing a double-act with China Mieville (there's still some tickets available). Tomorrow I'm off to the Boston Book Festival for the very last stop of the Pirate Cinema tour -- come on out and watch me attempt to … [Read more]
Cant We All Just Get Along?
Heres the weird thing about this identity gig: Theres no enemy. So who can we blame for our failures? Over the years, for each of the things Ive cared about, usually theres been an Adversary, a big strong scary one. Ive championed Unix against VMS, the Internet against the OSI stack, Linux against Windows, descriptive markup against Adobe, REST against WS-*, agile against waterfall, dynamic typing against the statically-typed incumbents, Android against locked-down app ecosystems, and so on. But, in the world of Identity, whos the bad guy? I mean, seriously, is there anyone who thinks the current username/password miasma is worth defending?
Cant We All Just Get Along?
Heres the weird thing about this identity gig: Theres no enemy. So who can we blame for our failures? Over the years, for each of the things Ive cared about, usually theres been an Adversary, a big strong scary one. Ive championed Unix against VMS, the Internet against the OSI stack, Linux against Windows, descriptive markup against Adobe, REST against WS-*, agile against waterfall, dynamic typing against the statically-typed incumbents, Android against locked-down app ecosystems, and so on. But, in the world of Identity, whos the bad guy? I mean, seriously, is there anyone who thinks the current username/password miasma is worth defending?
The Risks of Trusting Experts
I'm not sure what to think about this story: Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L'Aquila. A regional court found them guilty of multiple manslaughter. Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defence maintained there was no way...
Talking in Toronto today, tomorrow (then Boston!)
Hey, Toronto! I'll be at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors tonight and tomorrow night (tonight it's a joint appearance with Larissa Andrusyshyn, Stuart Clark, Corey Redekop and Robert J. Sawyer; tomorrow, it's a twofer with China Mieville). Then I head to Boston for the last engagement in my Pirate Cinema tour, a free, ticketed … [Read more]
Controlling server configurations with IPS
I recently received a customer question regarding how they best could control which packages and which versions were used on their production Solaris 11 servers. They had considered pointing each server at its own software repository - a common initial approach. A simpler method leverages one of dependency mechanisms we introduced with Solaris 11, but is not immediately obvious to most people. Typically, most internal IT departments qualify particular versions for production use. What this customer wanted to do was insure that their operations staff only installed internally qualified versions of Solaris on their servers. The easiest way of doing this is to leverage the 'incorporate' type of dependency in a small package defined for each server type. From the reference " Packaging and Delivering Software With the Image Packaging System in Oracle® Solaris 11.1": The incorporate dependency specifies that if the given package is installed, ...
High definition: a matter of viewpoint
I'm still looking for a new video card for my computer. It looks as if the Zotac ZT-60201-10L might be the choice. It seems that it can feed two monitors with up to 2560×1600 dpi. High definition indeed, at least in part. Clearly it hasn't filtered through to the spec sheet:
Risks of Data Portability
Peter Swire and Yianni Lagos have pre-published a law journal article on the risks of data portability. It specifically addresses an EU data protection regulation, but the security discussion is more general. ...Article 18 poses serious risks to a long-established E.U. fundamental right of data protection, the right to security of a person's data. Previous access requests by individuals were...
Coming to Toronto, Boston
Hey, Toronto! I'll be at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors on Thursday and Friday nights, both times at 8PM. On Thursday, I'm reading with Larissa Andrusyshyn, Stuart Clark, Corey Redekop and Robert J. Sawyer; on Friday, I'm doing a double-act with China Mieville. From there, I head to Boston for the final appearance of … [Read more]
NiZn batteries: more problems
The indoor part of the inside/outside thermometer has again had problems with the Nickel-Zinc batteries. Once again I noticed it because the illumination was weak. And once again the voltage of one of the batteries had dropped to just over 1.0 V. Looking at my records, I see it was the same one I had problems with last time. Here part of my records: Before After Battery Date ...
Coming to Seattle today, then Toronto and Boston
Hey, Seattle! I'll be in town for one day only today, making a pair of public appearances -- first at the University Bookstore at 1230h, then at Elliot Bay Books at 1900h. Both are free! From Seattle, I go east for the last two cities in my Pirate Cinema tour: first a pair of evening … [Read more]
GIMP: It must be like that
Callum Gibson disagreed with my comments on GIMP from a couple of days ago. I've heard them before, both from him and from others. I still disagree. In summary (my comments in italics): gimp * is not the correct way to use GIMP. But only because it handles the situation so badly. I'm not convinced that there is a good way to use GIMP. GIMP is very powerful but complicated.
Coming to Vancouver and Victoria today, then Seattle, Toronto and Boston
Hey, Vancouver and Victoria! Today I wrap up my Pirate Cinema tour weekend in Van with an appearance for the BC Civil Liberties Association and the Centre for Digital Media at 11AM at the Great Northern Way Campus, then I jump on a sea-plane and head to Victoria for a talk tonight at Bolen Books … [Read more]
Camera Jammer that Protects Licence Plates
noPhoto reacts to a camera flash, and then jams the image with a bright light. The website makes the point that this is legal, but that can't last....
Lookalikes
The seal of the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center declares "Protection is Our Trademark." But, is the same seal violating Nintendo's trademark for the Pokémon Zapdos? I'll let you decide. Thanks to Tomas Reimers for catching this one. Previous lookalikes here and here.
avidemux2: the pain
More discussion on IRC of the problems I've been having with avidemux2. There is no formal maintainer for the FreeBSD port, but Jürgen Lock has done some work on it recently. Did some more examination and discovered that I needed to install a second port, avidemux2-plugins. Why? One of the advantages of the Ports Collection is that this gets done for you. But it seems that there's an issue with the way newer versions of avidemux2 build, and that makes it incompatible with the Ports Collection. I'm sure there's a solution to that, but at the very least the port should print an appropriate message when it's done.
Chemical Element Trump Cards
I can still remember the weight of the Lancia Stratus car that featured in the Top Trumps cards were playing as children in the 1970s: 870kg. It was the lightest of all the flashy cars in the set, and therefore a much sought-after card. Other card sets that kept us busy included airplanes, motorcycles, and tanks. Through them we learned tens of useless trivia, but also got a feeling of the compromises inherent in engineering.
Coming to Kidsbooks, Vancouver tonight
Yo, Vancouver! Thanks to all of you who turned up to both of the sold-out events yesterday at the Writers Festival. If you missed out, I've got another event tonight, at Kidsbooks at 7PM, and I'll be at the Great Northern Way Campus Centre for Digital Media on Monday at 11, before I head to … [Read more]
GIMP: The solution?
Yvonne has been using xv for her photo processing for some time now. It's 20 years old, and by modern standards it's limited. In particular, it doesn't handle EXIF data, because it didn't exist when it was written. So it occurred to me that she might be able to use GIMP instead. She had taken some photos today, so I got her to try them out. What a pain! She hated it, and I can't blame her. Workflow is terrible. With xv, she simply did: === yvonne@lagoon (/dev/pts/9) ~/Photos/20121020 55 -> xv * xv then presents the photos one by one.
Google Mechanical Design
When I come across interesting innovations or designs notably different from the norm, I love to dig in and learn the details. More often than not I post them here. Earlier this week, Google posted a number of pictures taken from their datacenters (Google Data Center Tech). The pictures are beautiful and of interest to just about anyone, somewhat more interesting to those working in technology, and worthy of detailed study for those working in datacenter design. My general rule with Google has always been that anything they show publically is always at least one generation old and typically more.
Humble Ebook Bundle breaks the $1,000,000 barrier
Just now, a few minutes before 10AM Pacific, the Humble Ebook Bundle crossed the $1 MILLION mark. Yes, it's an arbitrary round number, but it's a BIGGUN! For those of you who haven't clocked it, the Humble Ebook Bundle is a collection of 13 ebooks -- science fiction, fantasy, and graphic novels -- for which … [Read more]
Pirate Cinema presentation at Brooklyns WORD
Joly MacFie from The Punkcast was good enough to bring his cameras down to my Pirate Cinema tour stop at Brooklyn's WORD books, and has uploaded the presentation (including the airing of the runners-up and winner of the remix video contest we held) to YouTube. Thanks, Joly!
Ill be at the Vancouver Writers Festival today with William Gibson
Hey, Vancouver! Quick reminder: there are still some tickets left for my appearance with William Gibson today at the Vancouver Writers Festival (the conversation with Margaret Atwood is sold out, alas), and I'll be around tomorrow at 7PM for a Kidsbooks event at the West Point Grey United Church, and then on Monday at 11AM … [Read more]
DxO Optics: Not supported
The progress of my bug report about saving defaults with DxO Optics Pro was amazing. First it got folded into a different ticket about the problems that DxO has, apparently with CIFSa completely unrelated issue. Then today I got a response: Microsoft Windows 8 isn't supported. Problem: the ticket relates to Microsoft Windows XP. And he asked for traces, which I had submitted over a month ago. Clearly a problem with the work flow in support. But where did he get the information that I'm running (pre-release) Windows 8? It's not in the bug report: I wasn't able to select it, so I specified Windows 7.
Correctly identifying plants
Over the last few days I've discovered a number of errors in plant naming. I've already mentioned the shrub we bought as Cissus, which I still haven't identified. But by chance I've come across a couple of others. The ginger that I have called Hedychium coronarium is in fact Hedychium gardnerianum. Hedychium coronarium looks very similar, but the flowers are white. Here my Hedychium gardnerianum, then Hedychium coronarium from wikimedia: width="300" /> In addition, while tidying up today, I found a label for an Iberis sempervirens Winter glow , which proves to be what I have been calling Euphorbia Diamond frost .
More video copying
Continued with copying video tapes todayI had forgotten how long this can take in real time. In the process it occurred to me how many different video cameras I have had. In 1984 I borrowed one for a specific event, and in 1985, just before the birth of my daughter Yana, I bought my first own camera/video recorder combination. But that didn't last long: in late 1988, I think, I got a hand-held 8mm Sony camcorder, to be followed up with a second in late 1999. That one died in 1986, and since then we haven't taken any video, though I bought a second-hand Samsung recorder to copy the tapes.
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Insurance
This was once a real insurance product. Squid Insurance Marketing was the low-end offering at Astonish, complete with the tagline "Nothing Kills a Squid!" As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
Stoking Cyber Fears
A lot of the debate around President Obama's cubsersecurity initiative center on how much of a burden it would be on industry, and how that should be financed. As important as that debate is, it obscures some of the larger issues surrounding cyberwar, cyberterrorism, and cybersecurity in general. It's difficult to have any serious policy discussion amongst the fear mongering....
Coming to Vancouver this weekend
Hey, Vancouver! I'm headed your way tomorrow for a pair of ticketed appearances at the Vancouver Writers Festival, the first with William Gibson at 2PM, then another at 5PM with Margaret Atwood and Pasha Malla. On Sunday at 6PM, Kidsbooks (one of the last great independent children's bookstores in the country) is hosting an event … [Read more]
Video processing software
Now that my old videos are gradually trickling in in digital format, it's time to cut them into individual clips. What do I use for that? Recently I've been using avidemux2, but this time I got a message I hadn't expected: OK, that's really for for AVI images, and this is MPEG. In the past I've used Project X, so I tried that again. But how do you use it? There's still no documentation, and I forgot. The only documentation I found was out of date and only addresses small parts of the program.
Coming to Edmonton tomorrow morning
Hey, Edmonton! A reminder: I'll be at the free PAGES library conference tomorrow morning at the Stanley Milner Library. My keynote is at 9:15 AM, followed by a Q&A at 1130h and a signing at 1, before I head out to Vancouver for the Vancouver Writers Festival where I'll be doing two ticketed events; one … [Read more]
Analysis of How Bitcoin Is Actually Used
"Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction Graph," by Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir: Abstract. The Bitcoin scheme is a rare example of a large scale global payment system in which all the transactions are publicly accessible (but in an anonymous way). We downloaded the full history of this scheme, and analyzed many statistical properties of its associated transaction graph....
Diary topics revisited
About four years ago I made a change to this diary, adding topics , or categories . Nothing new; others have been doing it for years. But of course I wanted to do it My Way. Not too many categories; people will miss things like that. And preferably ones that are orthogonal. At the time, it seems that computers ( technology , for want of a better term), photography and multimedia were relatively orthogonal, but they're coalescing. All the more reason for a small number of categories.
Video online
I've been taking photos for over half a century, and I've spent a lot of effort over the last few years to put them on the web in a manner I consider appropriate. But in the early 1980s I was unfaithful: I first borrowed, then bought a video camera, and declared that from then on all my records would be on video. It took until about 10 years ago for me to reconsider. Videos can contain more information than photos, but watching them takes time. Even today I don't often look at YouTube videos, because my experience is that they're seldom worth the expenditure of time.
Sandman Pricing
Back in September I recommended (albeit in a sort of snotty tone) Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey. Shortly after that, I found out that its not just a book, its a series. Ive been reading it but Ive stopped because I think Amazons robbing me. I realized that Id enjoyed Slims company and the dark sparkle of the conversation so much that Id ignore the silly back story and cartoon theology and give the sequels a try. Im glad I did, because theyre terrific fun. But then I noticed people talking about how the book was on sale cheap, like for 99¢; Id paid a lot more.
Sandman Pricing
Back in September I recommended (albeit in a sort of snotty tone) Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey. Shortly after that, I found out that its not just a book, its a series. Ive been reading it but Ive stopped because I think Amazons robbing me. [Update:] As many commenters have pointed out, the price difference seems to be because Im in Canada. A few points on that: The un-signed-in browser is also coming to Amazon from Canada, and Amazon knows that. I paid $10.36 on September 9th for Sandman Slim, which is now $1.15. I paid $9.35 for Kill the Dead, which is now $4.65 I paid $4.63 for Aloha from Hell, which is (gasp!)
Google Throws Open Doors to Its Top-Secret Data Center
The photos look like "IBM meets Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory". For the first time, the company has invited cameras inside its top secret facility in North Carolina. Our tour guide is Google's senior vice president, Urs Hoelzle, who's in charge or building and running all of Google's data centers. 'Today we have 55,200 servers on this floor. Each of these servers is basically like a PC, except somewhat more powerful.' 5 minute video from CBS Morning Show: https://video.google.com/a/?tab=mv&pli=1#/Play/contentId=2e908def456860ab A detailed article by Steven Levy: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/ff-inside-google-data-center/
The App Developers Alliance
A couple of months ago, Jon Potter came over for lunch and asked me to be the chairman of the board at the Application Developers Alliance. I said, Sure! On one condition: I get to define what you mean by Application, what you mean by Developers, and of course, Alliance has the standard definition from Star Wars: A New Hope. He agreed to that. So, heres my attempt to define those things. Historically, the computer industry has divided software into two types. Systems Software is inward facing: it controls the computers themselves. That includes things like operating systems, internet servers, and so on.
Genetic Privacy
New report from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Biothethical Issues. It's called "Privacy and Progress in Whole Genome Sequencing." The Commission described the rapid advances underway in the field of genome sequencing, but also noted growing concerns about privacy and security. The report lists twelve recommendations to improve current practices and to help safeguard privacy and security, including...
A Japanese animation pirate cinema makers story
A reader of Pirate Cinema sent me her amazing story of how she became a video remix artist, and how she views the law and rules for copyright. We've published it as a feature on Boing Boing; here's a little taste of it: When MegaUpload was shut down, the Japanese media fan community was in … [Read more]
Universal Computer Users
Citing my talk on General Purpose Computing and regulation (and many other works), Olia Lialina describes a "General Purpose User... that was formed through three decades of adjusting general purpose technology to their needs": General Purpose Users can write an article in their e-mail client, layout their business card in Excel and shave in front … [Read more]
Coming to Bethesda tonight
Hey, DC! I'm heading to Bethesda today for my Pirate Cinema tour -- I'll be at the Bethesda Public Library tonight at 7PM. Come on out and say hi before I head to Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto and Boston! Here's the full schedule.
Interview on the Command Line podcast
I recently sat down with Thomas Gideon of the wonderful Command Line podcast, and talked about Rapture of the Nerds, Pirate Cinema, and the future of the Internet. It's always a pleasure to be on Thomas's show. MP3 Link
DxO bug reports
Finally got round to putting in a bug report for the problems I'm having with DxO Optics Pro . Their bug report site is only for customers, so here's the content: Since installing version 7.5.4 of DxO Optics "Pro", I have had numerous difficulties with the interface. In particular: The "process" window now shows the selected images, very slowly and out of sequence. In particular, the incorrect sequence is very irritating.
UPS problems solved
Another power failure at 3:21 this morning. Again only a brief failure, again the new UPS and the new power supply on eureka didn't help. Vented my anger on IRC, with unexpected results: gr00gle: Grrr. gr00gle: Another brief power failure, another system down. gr00gle: New UPS. New PSU. gr00gle: What can be causing it? callum: It's not plugged in to the UPS? peter: snap Darius: hehe callum: Seems the most obvious. callum: After all, you do have a messy desk. * gr00gle . o O ( For every complex problem there's a solution that is simple, elegant * gr00gle and wrong ) gr00gle: Still, worth a try.
Five more books join the Humble Ebook Bundle!
We've hit the halfway mark on the Humble Ebook Bundle, a name-your-price, support-for-charity, DRM-free ebook promotion. With one week to go, we've added in FIVE more books: XKCD Volume 0; Zach Weiner's Save Yourself, Mammal and The Most Dangerous Game; Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots; and Penny Arcade: Epic Legends of the Magic … [Read more]
Reader Q&A: volatile (again)
Sarmad Asgher asked a variant of a perennial question: I am implementing multi producer single consumer problem. I have shared variables like m_currentRecordsetSize which tells the current size of the buffer. I am using m_currentRecordsetSize in a critical section do i need to declare it as volatile. If youre in C or C++, and the [...]
ACM Queue interview on research into the hardware-software interface
ACM Queue has posted my August 2012 interview on research into the hardware-software interface. We discuss the importance of a whole-stack view in addressing contemporary application security problems, which are often grounded in how we represent and execute software over lower-level substrates. We need to consider CPU design, operating systems, programming languages, applications, and formal [...]
Studying Zero-Day Attacks
Interesting paper: "Before We Knew It: An Empirical Study of Zero-Day Attacks In The Real World," by Leyla Bilge and Tudor Dumitras: Abstract: Little is known about the duration and prevalence of zeroday attacks, which exploit vulnerabilities that have not been disclosed publicly. Knowledge of new vulnerabilities gives cyber criminals a free pass to attack any target of their choosing,...
My head, made of sugar
I'm heading to Philly tonight on the Pirate Cinema tour, and jrdnmlr from the Hive76 hackspace has downloaded the 3D scan of my head from Thingiverse, and is, even now, printing it out in sugar, using a Barracuda extruder. Can't wait to see it IRL.
Coming to Philly tonight
I'm heading to Philly today for an event at Indy Hall, co-sponsored by the awesome Geekadelphia and the Hive76 hackerspace. From there I go to Bethesda, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto, then, finally, Boston! Here's the schedule, looking forward to seeing you!
This Week in Tech
This weekend I appeared on the This Week in Tech Podcast, to talk about the tech news of the week, as well as Rapture of the Nerds, Pirate Cinema and Humble Ebook Bundle. The other guests on the show were Jason Hiner and Larry Magid, and Leo Laporte, as always, played host. It was a … [Read more]
More thoughts on NiZn batteries
A couple of days ago I noted that mixing different kinds of batteries is a Bad Thing after all, due to the possibility of passing more current through a discharged battery than it can handle. On that occasion the device was the indoor part of my wireless inside/outside thermometer, and I had put one Nickel-Zinc battery with one NiMH battery because two NiMH batteries weren't enough to run the illumination. So this time I put in two NiZn batteries, and sure enough, the illumination was wonderful. But that was 4 days ago. Today I looked again, and it was as dim as if I had had NiMH batteries in there.
Twitter OAuth, Easy
Back in 2009 I wrote this little Ruby script I run Mondays to grab the last weeks tweets and publish them into the Short-form Fragments stream here on the blog, because who knows when Twitter might make my history vanish? It broke today and I fixed it and had another instructive OAuth experience. The error message was a 404 on something called user_timeline.xml; a bit of poking around produced contradictory evidence, but some of it was that this had been deprecated in favor of a JSON version. I was a little irritated but not too much; Id been using XPath probes to pull the interesting bits out of the XML, and tweets arent document-like at all, so JSON should be a better fit.
5k: Hard Again
In the mid-Seventies, old Mississippi/Chicago bluesman Muddy Waters had record-label problems, but still an audience. Young Texas bluesman Johnny Winter had never been a pop star, but had one too. So Johnny producing and playing on an album by Muddy wasnt really a long shot; and Hard Again came out great. ( 5k series introduction here; with an explanation of why the title may look broken.) The Context Nobody has ever played electric blues better than McKinley Morganfield. I saw him a few times, the last time just months before his death; of that, I wrote here: He was old and seemed older; was helped onto the stage and performed sitting down.
Why Vinyl?
As an engineer and Internet guy, I feel almost guilty about the fact that I like listening to LPs so much; the technologies used to record the music and play it back should be obsolete. But I do. [This piece was originally going to be the last paragraph of 5k: Hard Again, but it got out of control; you can love Seventies electric blues without caring in the slightest about audio technology.] Im OK with digital music; my big setup is perfectly capable of vanishing when its playing anything produced with even modest competence, and regularly does better, grabbing my attention when its wandered, making me think damn, that sounds good. But theres the occasional work on well-recorded vinyl that goes further: when suddenly, the musicians...
Why Vinyl?
As an engineer and Internet guy, I feel almost guilty about the fact that I like listening to LPs so much; the technologies used to record the music and play it back should be obsolete. But I do. [This piece was originally going to be the last paragraph of 5k: Hard Again, but it got out of control; you can love Seventies electric blues without caring in the slightest about audio technology.] Im OK with digital music; my big setup is perfectly capable of vanishing when its playing anything produced with even modest competence, and regularly does better, grabbing my attention when its wandered, making me think damn, that sounds good. But theres the occasional work on well-recorded vinyl that goes further: when suddenly, the musicians...
Apple Turns on iPhone Tracking in iOS6
This is important: Previously, Apple had all but disabled tracking of iPhone users by advertisers when it stopped app developers from utilizing Apple mobile device data via UDID, the unique, permanent, non-deletable serial number that previously identified every Apple device. For the last few months, iPhone users have enjoyed an unusual environment in which advertisers have been largely unable to...
Interview with CBCs CanadaWrites
I did a little eight-question interview with the CBC's CanadaWrites program. Here's a few of 'em: 6. Sharon Butala asks, What do you think of the age-old notion that the best writing comes out of a life led outside the bourgeoisie, where so-called "rules" of normal middle-class life are deliberately broken and impulse is your … [Read more]
Master Keys
Earlier this month, a retired New York City locksmith was selling a set of "master keys" on eBay: Three of the five are standard issue for members of the FDNY, and the set had a metal dog tag that was embossed with an FDNY lieutenant's shield number, 6896. The keys include the all-purpose "1620," a master firefighter key that with...
Coming to Brooklyn tonight
Hey, Brooklyn! I'll be at WORD Books tonight at 7PM for the last New York stop on my Pirate Cinema tour. Tomorrow I'll be in Philly at Indy Hall, before heading to Bethesda, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto and Boston (whew!). Looking forward to seeing you there! Here's the whole schedule -- be there or … [Read more]
Flowers in garden again
Garden flower photo day today, again without too much difficulty. The real issue was with DxO Optics Pro . I strongly suspect that a(nother) bug has slipped in in the last version. I can save my workspaces all I want, but when I load them again, it is still missing a number of settings. More experimentation needed, but for the time being I need to set all the parameters manually Every Time. The other issues I have are that DxO, Microsoft Windows 8 and VirtualBox all seem to be buggy enough that together they crash about one run in 3. And when I restart Windows , it doesn't reconnect the network drives, for reasons that aren't obvious to me.
Interview with Dan Patterson
Dan Patterson interviewed me for his podcast at New York Comic-Con. We talked about comics, network policy, and my new novel Pirate Cinema MP3 Link
Lightroom Hint
Probably everyone else already knows this trick, but in case you dont: You can tell Lightroom that whenever you import photos, if it recognizes the lens, to just go ahead and apply the default lens correction. Go into Develop mode; in the left side panel there are Presets, and at the bottom of that there are User Presets. Find New Preset in the menus, and uncheck everything except for the default lens correction. Give it a name and save it. Next time you go into Import, theres an Apply During Import thingie in the right panel; put your new lens-corrector preset in there.
More network disconnects
Three more network disconnects today, for once all clearly pointing at Optus: in each case I received a terminate request. But does that help? The Optus people who determine policy probably don't even understand the issues, and I'd probably still need to reproduce it with a different dongle. Is it worth it? Roll on the radiation tower.
More fun processing photos
House photo day today, without very much to report. The weather was moist, but I managed to get most photos done without trouble. The processing was a different matter. In the last few months I've changed the environment in which I run DxO Optics Pro . I used to run it on a Microsoft machine that Chris Yeardley lent me, until Powercor destroyed it with a power surge. Then I ran it on VirtualBox, first with Microsoft Windows XP, then with a 64 bit Windows 8 preview, since DxO claim it's faster that way. I've also installed a couple of new versions.
Another Liars and Outliers Review
I was reviewed in Science: Thus it helps to have a lucid and informative account such as Bruce Schneier's Liars and Outliers. The book provides an interesting and entertaining summary of the state of play of research on human social behavior, with a special emphasis on trust and trustworthiness. [...] Free from preoccupations and personal attachments to any of the...
Coming to NY Comic-Con today
Hey New Yorkers! I'll be at New York Comic-Con today, speaking in the Author Spotlight on the Unbound Stage at 12 o'clock, and then signing books at the Tor Booth (#920) at 3PM. On Monday night, I'll be at Brooklyn's WORD books at 7PM, before heading to Philly, Bethesda, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto and … [Read more]
Back-to-Basics Weekend Reading - Automatic Reconfiguration in Autonet
I wrote this post last week but didn't get around to publishing it. I am heading to Europe this weekend for, among other things, Structure Europe and the AWS Summit in Tel Aviv. My time in India is almost over and I am heading back to Seattle. I am bringing with me on the plane a relatively unknown paper that I really enjoyed when it was first published. Autonet was a point-to-point network designed at Dec SRC research lab by Mike Schroeder's group. The original paper on Autonet can be found here. I am actually picking a follow-up paper to read this weekend, it deals with fault-tolerance of the network through automatic reconfiguration of its components.
Yet Another ls option
Once upon a time, files were small. The First Edition of Unix had a maximum file size of 64 kB, and even today we see the effect of the ancient 2 GB limit in the Linux O_LARGEFILE flag to open. But the truth is much larger. I back up my systems to disk, and looking at them is something like: === grog@eureka (/dev/pts/14) ~ 29 -> ls -l /src/dump/boskoop/ total 168169 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 36211690564 Mar 20 2012 boskoop.disk0-1.bz2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 16596907252 Dec 24 2009 boskoop.disk0.bz2 -rw-r--r-- 1 grog wheel 4173914809 Jul 20 2006 boskopp.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 10273920512 Mar 18 2012 delicious-image -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 80026361856 Mar 18 2012 old-boskoop-image -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 28968755200 Mar 16 2012 root.tar What are those values?
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Car
A squid art car. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
Back-to-Basics Weekend Reading - Automatic Reconfiguration in Autonet
I wrote this post last week but didn’t get around to publishing it. I am heading to Europe this weekend for, among other things, Structure Europe and the AWS Summit in Tel Aviv. My time in India is almost over and I am heading back to Seattle. I am bringing with me on the plane a relatively unknown paper that I really enjoyed when it was first published.
IPv6 Flashcards
IPv6 is an entirely new protocol. It isn't IPv4 with larger addresses. It is new enough that you'll feel like you are starting over on a new planet; one that invented the internet using protocols that remind you of IPv4 but are.... different. I find flashcards are a useful way to learn new terminology. I found these online: General IPv6 Knowledge: High level. Types and Ranges of IPv6 Addresses. Learn those new IP ranges! CCIE IPv6: Lots of technical details. Enjoy! Tom Limoncelli
Pirate Cinema in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus
The Bradford Telegraph and Argus covers Pirate Cinema today, thanks to David Barnett, who explains how Pirate Cinema came to be set in his paper's town. Mr Doctorow says he didnt just pluck Bradford out of a hat hes visited the city several times and spent some time here in 2009 when the big … [Read more]
Coming to NY Comic-Con today!
Hey, NYC! Start spreading the news, etc, as I'm appearing today and tomorrow at NY Comic-Con -- signing today at 1715h at Table 2, speaking Sunday at 10AM, and signing again at the Tor booth on Sunday at 3PM. I'll be at Brooklyn's WORD books on Monday night (today's the last day to submit your … [Read more]
Don't mix battery types
I've had mainly good experience with the Nickel-Zinc batteries that I bought last year. My only concern is that the high voltage (1.8 V) would be too much for some devices designed for conventional 1.5 V ZnC or alkaline batteries, so in many cases I tried mixing them with NiMH batteries to get voltages such as 3 V from one of each. People say you shouldn't do that. Why? They're in series, so the voltages just add up. But in practice, I've noticed that when they discharge, it's the NiZn battery first, and it shows alarmingly low voltages. The first time I thought it was possibly a defective battery, but it happened again today.
Help Plan My 2013
The Identity group where Im working now is going to be launching some stuff soon, and I want to go out and talk to the world about it. Im looking for input on good developer-focused meetings and conferences that I should be at to talk and, more important, listen. Subject Matter At the moment, heres what I believe: The username/password dance sucks and doesnt scale, particularly on mobile. People putting up apps and sites regard identity getting people signed up & signed in purely as a tax; something they gotta do, but unrelated to what they care about. Most developers dont understand identity standards like OAuth, or the related crypto and signing technologies, dont want to learn them, and shouldnt have to.
Doing a Reddit AMA today at 1PM Pacific
I'm doing a Reddit AMA ("Ask Me Anything") at 1PM Pacific today! Come along and ask me anything!
Amazon Event in Palo Alto (10/11@5pm)
The last few weeks have been busy and it has been way too long since I have blogged. Im currently thinking through the server tax and whats wrong with the current server hardware ecosystem but dont have anything yet ready to go on that just yet. But, there are a few other things on the go. I did a talk at Intel a couple of weeks back and last week at the First Round Capital CTO summit. Ive summarized what I covered below with pointers to slides. In addition, Ill be at the Amazon in Palo Alto event this evening and will do a talk there as well.
Virtualize Me
The virtual machine (VM) is the most dazzling comeback in information technology. IBM implemented a VM platform architecture in the late 1960s in its CP/CMS operating system. The companys goal was to provide the time-sharing capabilities that its batch-oriented System/360 lacked. Thus a simple control program (CP) created a VM environment where multiple instances of the single-user CMS operating system could run in parallel. Thirty years later, virtualization was rediscovered when companies like VMware found ways to virtualize the less accommodating Intel x86 processor architecture.
"Ask Nicely" Doesn't Work as a Security Mechanism
Apple's map application shows more of Taiwan than Google Maps: The Taiwanese government/military, like many others around the world, requests that satellite imagery providers, such as Google Maps, blur out certain sensitive military installations. Unfortunately, Apple apparently didn't get that memo. [...] According to reports the Taiwanese defence ministry hasn't filed a formal request with Apple yet but thought it...
Coming to Evanston, IL tonight!
Hey, Evanston, IL! I'll be at the Evanston Public Library tonight, on the final stop of the Chicago-area part of my Pirate Cinema tour (if you're coming, you can RSVP here). Tomorrow, I head to NYC for appearances at Comic-Con and WORD Books in Brooklyn (here's our video remix contest), and thence to Philly, Bethesda, … [Read more]
Mechanical Computer instructional video
US Army 1953 training film on mechanical computers. Gears! Cams! Great animations! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4
The Insecurity of Networks
Not computer networks, networks in general: Findings so far suggest that networks of networks pose risks of catastrophic danger that can exceed the risks in isolated systems. A seemingly benign disruption can generate rippling negative effects. Those effects can cost millions of dollars, or even billions, when stock markets crash, half of India loses power or an Icelandic volcano spews...
Coming to Naperville, IL tonight
Hey, Naperville, IL! I'll be speaking and signing at Anderson's Bookshop tonight at 7PM, in part two of the Chicagoland leg of my Pirate Cinema tour, which wraps up tomorrow night at the Evanston Public Library. Anderson's is one of the nation's great indie bookstores, ranking in my books with the likes of Powell's, and … [Read more]
Dont Change Your Hair For Me
For the first time since 2003 Im seriously thinking about switching to Ubuntu. It feels like, since Snow Leopard, more things have been subtracted from than added to my Mac. This syndrome infects product-management groups everywhere not just in Cupertino; We know better; the experience for the average user will be better without that. But there aint no such thing as an average user, and its almost always a bad idea to subtract a shipping feature. In Particular Since Snow Leopard, theres been exactly one useful new OS X thing: windows you can resize at any edge. And there have been brutal amputations (most painful for me: loss of the Apache GUI and the moronic refusal to tell me what screen resolutions Im using).
CL XXIII: High Pressure
I mean the large zone of elevated atmospheric pressure which has blessed the Pacific Northwest for many weeks now, making this past summers Cottage Life a more or less weather-untroubled sun-bath. Me, I cant wait for the rain (coming Friday they say). The huge cedars and hemlock around our cabin are hanging in but theyre hurting; you can see lots of brown patches among the needles. I know perfectly well that winters winds will blow the dead bits down on the cabin by the bushel and clog our gutters and downspouts. There seems no technology that can address this. I was sitting under the cedars and glanced up; my eyes were caught by an odd lighting effect as the slanting October sun caught the boughs and needles sideways.
Pirate Cinema, for your downloading pleasure
It took me a little while, but the Pirate Cinema website is finally up, with multiformat downloads and purchase links for the ebooks, print books, and audioboks. Have at it!
CTP of Windows XP Targeting with C++ in Visual Studio 2012
The three by-far-most-requested missing features from Visual C++ 2012 were: Conformance: Keep adding more C++11 language conformance features. XP Targeting: Deliver the ability to build applications that could run on Windows XP, as well as Windows Vista, 7, and 8. Desktop Express: Deliver a free VC++ Express compiler that can be used to create traditional [...]
Story of a CIA Burglar
This is a fascinating story of a CIA burglar, who worked for the CIA until he tried to work against the CIA. The fact that he stole code books and keys from foreign embassies makes it extra interesting, and the complete disregard for the Constitution at the end makes it extra scary....
Coming to Deerfield, IL tonight
Cory in Deerfield, IL tonight Hey, Deerfield, IL! I'll be at the Deerfield High School Auditorium tonight at 7PM for the latest stop in my Pirate Cinema tour. I've got two other stops in the Chicago area: tomorrow, it's Anderson's Books in Naperville; on Thursday it's the Evanston Public Library. From there, I go to … [Read more]
EDID: Good when it's right
Looking at the EDID information for my new 2560×1440 monitor was instructive, though I didn't really need to go into that much detail: the monitor Just Worked. But it was another matter with my Sanyo PLV-Z700 data projector: in the over 2 years I have had it, I haven't been able to get a really clean display at the native 1920×1080. Time to look at the EDID. What a surprise!
Has the job of a Google SRE changedover the years?
Someone recently asked me if Google's SRE position has change over the years. The answer is 'yes and no'. Yes, the job has changed because there is more diversity in the kind of work that SREs do. Google has more products and therefore more SRE teams. Each team is unique but we all work under the same mission, executive management, and best practices. All teams strive to use the same best practices for release engineering, operational improvements, debugging, monitoring, and so on. Yes, since each SRE team is responsible for a different product with different needs, you'll find each one can be unique priorities.
New Developments in Captchas
In the never-ending arms race between systems to prove that you're a human and computers that can fake it, here's a captcha that tests whether you have human feelings. Instead of your run-of-the-mill alphanumeric gibberish, or random selection of words, the Civil Rights Captcha presents you with a short blurb about a Civil Rights violation and asks you how you...
Efficient power supplies save power
I've now had my new Antec EA-550 power supply for over a week, and I've been keeping track of the power it uses: Reading Total Power (kWh) Date Time Power usage ...
Coming to Redondo Beach today
Yo, Redondo Beach! You're my last west coast stop on this leg of the Pirate Cinema tour, and I'll be at Mysterious Galaxy today at 2:30PM (I'll be back on this coast later to visit Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle). Tomorrow, I'll be in Lansing, MI, before a multi-day Chicagoland extravaganza. The tour has stops in … [Read more]
Coming to Pasadena this afternoon!
Hey, Pasadena! I'm signing and speaking at Vroman's Bookstore this afternoon at 3PM, as part of the Pirate Cinema tour. I'll be in Rendondo Beach at Mysterious Galaxy tomorrow, before heading east to Lansing, MI, then Chicago, NYC, Bethesda, Edmonton, and many other cities in the US and Canada. Here's the full schedule -- I'm … [Read more]
Domain name renewal: for you, four times the price
The domain fbbg.org.au is coming up for renewal, and I got a reminder with typical content: The following domain(s) will expire on the date indicated unless renewed. Please visit http://www.transact.com.au/ to renew. Of course there's no information on domain renewal at http://www.transact.com.au/; it's far deeper. Took the search function and arrived at http://www.transact.com.au/en/business/products/web-hosting/domain-names. And the price was really good: $17 for two years. But how do you renew? There's no information there about renewal. In the end called TransACT up and asked. They didn't know either, but they got Steve McCulloch to call me back.
Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Engraving from the 1870s
Neat book illustration. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
The Playoffs
I watched more baseball this season than I have in years (partly due to having gotten into Roku and MLB.tv); now the fun part starts. Lets have our own fun with predictions and opinions. Baseball Its better than other sports because they play on dirt! And also, because theres no clock, theres never a reason to run it out. And because the tension in the late stages of a close game; not remotely equaled by any other sport. MLB.tv Its really done astonishingly well; the virtues of baseball and the Internet mesh without any visible stress or strain, and I know that didnt happen by accident.
When Will We See Collisions for SHA-1?
On a NIST-sponsored hash function mailing list, Jesse Walker (from Intel; also a member of the Skein team) did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to estimate how long it will be before we see a practical collision attack against SHA-1. I'm reprinting his analysis here, so it reaches a broader audience. According to E-BASH, the cost of one block of a SHA-1...
Pirate Flix: Video remix contest
On the NYC leg of my Pirate Cinema tour, I'll be stopping at Brooklyn's wonderful indie bookstore WORD. The WORD folks have cooked up a remix video competition for the event, inviting you to make short remix videos, 1-3 minutes long. I'll be judging the finalists, and the winner will be screened at my reading … [Read more]
Coming to Berkeley tonight
Hey, Berkeley! I'll be at Books Inc tonight on 4th Street at 7PM, as part of the Pirate Cinema tour. Tomorrow, I'll be in Pasadena and then Redondo Beach, then Lansing, MI, Chicagoland, and many (many!) other US and Canadian cities. Here's the whole schedule -- come on out and say hi!
Maps Showing Spread of ZeroAccess Botnet
The folks at F-Secure have plotted ZeroAccess infections across the U.S. and across Europe. It's interesting to see, but I'm curious to see the data normalized to the number of computers on the Internet....
More network disconnects
Another network disconnect today, the first in nearly a week. Another of the kind that I suspect is a firmware reset, but this time clearly heralded by Optus network activity: Oct 4 15:39:50 nerd-gw fstats: +CGREG 1 81E3 8FC8E66 ... Oct 4 15:43:40 nerd-gw fstats: +CGREG 1 81E3 8FC8E4A ... Oct 4 15:48:08 nerd-gw fstats: +CGREG 1 81E3 8FC8E52 ... Oct 4 15:56:49 nerd-gw fstats: +CGREG 1 81E3 8FC48E8 Oct 4 16:00:46 nerd-gw fstats: +CGREG 1 81E3 8FC8F2E Oct 4 16:00:58 nerd-gw fstats: +CGREG 2 Oct 4 16:00:58 nerd-gw fstats: +CGREG 2 Oct 4 16:00:58 nerd-gw fstats: +CGREG 1 81E3 8FC48E8 Oct 4 16:04:04 nerd-gw ppp[1663]: tun0: Phase: deflink: read (0): Got zero bytes Oct 4 16:04:04 nerd-gw kernel: ugen0.2: <HUAWEI Technology> at usbus0 (disconnected) Oct 4 16:04:04 nerd-gw kernel: u3g0: at uhub0, port 1, addr 2 (disconnected) Oct 4 16:04:04 ...
Ballarat Gardens in Spring 2012
Spent most of the morning preparing a web page for Ballarat Gardens in Spring 2012, not too early. Somehow I need to wean the Friends from PDFs to proper web pages.
Pirate Cinema audiobook: no DRM, no EULA, just the spoken word
Further to yesterday's post about the availablity of a DRM-free, EULA-free MP3 download for the audiobook of Little Brother, I'm pleased to announce that I'm also selling the audiobook for my new novel Pirate Cinema. As with the Little Brother audio, this is a professionally voiced, unabridged audiobook from Random House Audio. This one is … [Read more]
Appearance in San Francisco tonight!
Hey, San Francisco! I'm at Borderlands Books in the Mission tonight at 7PM, for the Pirate Cinema tour! Tomorrow night it's Berkeley, then south to LA, then all the way to Lansing, MI, and then a host of other cities across Canada and the USA. Check the full schedule -- I hope I get to … [Read more]
You have been endorsed!
Lately I've been receiving messages like this one, sent from LinkedIn: Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2012 19:41:31 +0000 (UTC) From: Tom Rhodes <[email protected]> To: Greg Lehey <[email protected]> Received: from maile-aa.linkedin.com (maile-aa.linkedin.com [69.28.147.164]) by w3.lemis.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9CF323B74B for <[email protected]>; Wed, 3 Oct 2012 19:41:32 +0000 (UTC) Subject: Tom Rhodes has endorsed you! Message-ID: <975062635.5112619.1349293291862.JavaMail.app@ela4-app2310.prod> Tom Rhodes has endorsed you! Greg, I've just endorsed you for skills & expertise! See your endorsements by clicking here: http://www.linkedin.com/e/d4m02c-h7uudz6c-4d/Jmg7x16irWb3uf_He_84g0mS/spe/true/eml-skills_endorsements-btn-0-new_teaser/?hs=false&tok=23qfpEuZat95s1 And yes, the & is in the original.
Download the Little Brother audiobook
Thanks to the kind folks at Random House Audio, I'm now able to offer direct downloads of the unabridged audiobook of Little Brother, read by Kirby Heyborne. The download is DRM-free, and comes with no EULA -- in other words, the only terms binding your use of it are: "Don't violate copyright law." It's $20, … [Read more]
Poll: What features would you like to see added soonest in your favorite C++ compiler?
I just got back from teaching a class, and I’m always amazed at the breadth and diversity of C++ developers. As Bjarne Stroustrup famously says: “No one knows ‘what most C++ developers do.’” In particular, I’m surprised at how strongly some people feel about certain features, such as refactoring or safety or raw performance or [...]
Pirate Cinema Audiobook
This unabridged reading of Pirate Cinema, read by Bruce Mann, is sold without DRM, or license agreement of any kind, and by buying it here, you more than triple the royalties I receive for it. The audiobook was produced by Random House Audio. Once you've completed your purchase, you'll get a download link for a … [Read more]
Authentication Stories
Anecdotes from Asia on seals versus signatures on official documents....
Homomorphic Encryption Explained
American Scientist has an article that (finally!) explains homomorphic encryption in simple enough terms that even I understand. Homomorphic encryption permits me to send you encrypted data that you can manipulate but never know the contents. You send it back to me, I decrypt it, and see the result. Imagine if a web-based wordprocessor could store your document, edit your document, but never know what your document says. Yes, it sounds crazy but it is theoretically possible. In the last 4 years that theory has been getting closer and closer to reality. I think sysadmins should read this article to get an idea of what crypto might be like in the future.
Little Brother Audiobook
This unabridged reading of Little Brother, read by Kirby Heyborne, is sold without DRM, or license agreement of any kind, and by buying it here, you more than triple the royalties I receive for it. The audiobook was produced by Random House Audio (I've embedded their preview below). Once you've completed your purchase, you'll get … [Read more]
Coming to Menlo Park tonight
Hey, Menlo Park! I'm coming to Kepler's Books tonight at 7PM for the Pirate Cinema tour! I hope to see you there. I'll be in San Francisco tomorrow (Thu), Berkeley on Friday, and then I head south to Pasadena and Redondo Beach, before going east to Lansing, MI, and then many other cities. Here's the … [Read more]
Keccak is SHA-3
NIST has just announced that Keccak has been selected as SHA-3. It's a fine choice. I'm glad that SHA-3 is nothing like the SHA-2 family; something completely different is good. Congratulations to the Keccak team. Congratulations -- and thank you -- to NIST for running a very professional, interesting, and enjoyable competition. The process has increased our understanding about the...
Book flights to Usenix LISA asap!
Flights are filling up. Book soon. And book your hotel too. One thing I learned from traveling is that it is easier to make a reservation early and cancel/change it than to end up close to the date and find there are no hotel rooms or flights left. This is especially important for hotels. https://www.usenix.org/lisa
Noelogofaves
I so enjoy being a citizen of the living and in fact sweaty smelly and horny English language. Here are some favorite neologisms of my adult years. I Was Like I remember the first time I noticed this, in an early-Web-era chunk of trash-TV commentary, and remarking how instantly comprehensible it was. I was like, he really shouldnt have done that. The comma is weak there (but typographically and grammatically helpful), much stronger in usages such as She was like, ewwwww. This has totally overrun the territory formerly occupied by I said, in effect, ... , along the lines of , and related idioms.
2013 U.S. Homeland Security Budget
Among other findings in this CBO report: Funding for homeland security has dropped somewhat from its 2009 peak of $76 billion, in inflation-adjusted terms; funding for 2012 totaled $68 billion. Nevertheless, the nation is now spending substantially more than what it spent on homeland security in 2001. Note that this is just direct spending on homeland security. This does not...
Appearing in St Louis tonight
Hey, St Louis readers! Looking forward to meeting you tonight at the first stop of my Pirate Cinema tour, at the St Louis County Library at 7PM! Next up, stops in northern and southern California, Lansing, Chicagoland, NYC, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto and Boston.
Kernel and module bloat
I noted yesterday that the nvidia driver module had got smaller. It certainly didn't get small. Once upon a time, UNIX kernels were really small, because they had to: === root@eureka (/dev/pts/6) ~ 73 -> l -rS /src/UNIX/Sixth-Edition/unix /src/UNIX/Seventh-Edition/unix -r--r--r-- 1 grog wheel 28684 Jul 18 1975 /src/UNIX/Sixth-Edition/unix -r-xr-xr-x 1 grog wheel 51274 Jun 9 1979 /src/UNIX/Seventh-Edition/unix We have more space nowadays, and kernels have increased dramatically in size since then. And why not? The Sixth Edition was designed for a machine with 128 kB of address space, so the kernel took up roughly 20% of the address space.
Spiceworks interview: part 2
Part 2 of my interview at SpiceWorks is up. Q&A: Tom Limoncelli on the state of IT and junk meetings Q&A Part 2: Tom Limoncelli talks about success, failure and pirates vs zombies Enjoy!
Scary iPhone Malware Story
This story sounds pretty scary: Developed by Robert Templeman at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indiana and a few buddies from Indiana University, PlaceRader hijacks your phone's camera and takes a series of secret photographs, recording the time, and the phone's orientation and location with each shot. Using that information, it can reliably build a 3D model of your...
Coming to St Louis and 17 other cities for the Pirate Cinema tour
Hey, St Louis, MO! I'm headed your way, for the kick-off of the tour for my latest YA novel, Pirate Cinema. I'll be at the St. Louis County Library on Tuesday, October 2 at 7PM for an event hosted by Left Bank Books. There are 18 (!) cities on this tour, so be sure and … [Read more]