Saturday, January 01, 2000
It's the end of the world as we know it
So with much fanfare, fireworks and music, we announced the arrival of The Year Two Thousand and depite the hype for the Year Two Thousand Bug, nothing much of not actually happened, which is a good thing.
The party was hosted by my friend Teen and her boyfriend outside their home in lovely Parkland, FL. They dig a pit for the bonfire and by the time I had arrived at 9 pm, it was pretty thick with coals already. By the time my friend Shane and I put the fire out, the coals were hot enough to melt glass.
The actual fanfare consisted of a lot of fireworks being set off by various party members. All of the fireworks consisted of variations on Roman Candles—none of the fireworks we had were capable of being fired up in the air—but we did have enough going that a large cloud of smoke was drifting its way lazily across the field and the nearby horses (the party was held near a stable) were all spooked and one broke out of its stable.
The fact that I still had a house, with power, was a plus.
The garage is over there, but you can't park there …
After getting up from the previous night's (and morning's) celebrations, I had enough time to check some email before heading out to the Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport to pick up some friends returning from visiting family.
The Ft. Lauderdale Airport used to be a decently designed airport—three terminals in a U-shaped configuration, with a parking garage nestled between the terminals. It was an easy matter of parking, and walking to the appropriate terminal. The airport itself is accessable directly from the freeway (exit 11B on I-595 east). Nice. Simple. Easy.
Well, it used to be.
Since I last picked someone up, they've started construction on a new terminal (renumbering the original ones) and a new parking garage, in front of the old one. Driving into the airport there was one of those large digital signs used for construction pointing the entrance to the new garage was this immediate left turn from which a few cars were trying to leave the garage. Just a mess.
Once parked, I found it impossible to find a way to actually walk out of the garage and to any of the terminals, and from what I could see, there was no way to get to the terminal I needed to be at (the one farthest back) except to leave this garage, and drive to the original one next door.
Fortunately, I wasn't parked long enough to accrue a charge, but still, I had to circle back around the airport, in which I missed the pickup lanes (I ended up on the upper level reserved for dropping off passengers). I did manage to find entry to the original parking garage but that did mean I was several minutes late in picking up my friends.
I walked into the airport and immediately found Paul. Which isn't hard when you're looking for a 6'4" bald guy. His wife, Lorie was on the upper level where the gates are, looking for me. So I told him to stay put and I'll go find his wife.
I head upstairs and I don't see her. Walk down the entire length of the terminal, head downstairs and walk back to Paul.
“Didn't find her,” I said. “Which gate did you come in?”
“The one above the stairs over there,” said Paul. I took leave again, rode the escalator up and found Lorie waiting for me at the top.
“I was worried you forgot about us,” she said.
“Nope, I just got stuck in the parking vortex of Hell,” I said. We then proceeded to walk downstairs, to collect Paul and the luggage and then headed out to my car.
I drove them home, then we went out for a nice dinner.
V2_OS and other strange brews
Checked up on VS_OS today. Surprise, surprise, they finally released the source code. Immediately downloaded it and took a look.
Nothing surprising really, except that the source code to the bootsector is missing. Or rather, there is code to a boot sector, but …
BOOTIMAGE DB 0E9H, 011H, 001H, 0FFH, 0FFH, 0FFH, 0FFH, 0FFH, 02BH, 056H
DB 032H, 05FH, 046H, 053H, 02BH, 000H, 030H, 030H, 030H, 02EH
DB 030H, 030H, 035H, 000H, 080H, 000H, 000H, 000H, 000H, 000H
DB 000H, 000H, 044H, 033H, 022H, 011H, 010H, 000H, 000H, 000H
DB 000H, 000H, 000H, 000H, 000H, 000H, 00DH, 00AH, 056H, 032H
DB 02DH, 04FH, 053H, 020H, 056H, 030H, 02EH, 031H, 020H, 028H
DB 043H, 029H, 031H, 039H, 039H, 039H, 020H, 056H, 032H, 05FH
DB 04CH, 061H, 062H, 02CH, 020H, 052H, 06FH, 074H, 074H, 065H
DB 072H, 064H, 061H, 06DH, 02EH, 00DH, 00AH, 000H, 04CH, 06FH
DB 061H, 064H, 069H, 06EH, 067H, 020H, 053H, 079H, 073H, 074H
DB 065H, 06DH, 031H, 036H, 000H, 00DH, 00AH, 046H, 061H, 069H
And some interesting code like:
MOV DI, OFFSET PARTLIST MOV AL, 'f' MOV DS:[DI+0], AL MOV DS:[DI+16], AL MOV AL, 'd' MOV DS:[DI+1], AL MOV DS:[DI+17], AL MOV AL, '0' MOV DS:[DI+2], AL MOV DS:[DI+18], AL MOV AL, 0 MOV DS:[DI+3], AL ; 'FD0',0 MOV DS:[DI+19], AL
Two things wrong here (at least for 80x86 Assembly):
- Using DI instead of EDI in 32-bit mode. This causes an extra byte of opcode to be generated for a 16-bit offset.
- Moving individual letters into locations. If you are
doing this at this level, you can do better by:
mov eax,$00306466 ; 'fd0',0 mov [edi],eax ; DS: override mov [edi+16],eax ; not needed
In poking around, I found a link to RDOS, another 80x86 operating system written in Assembly. This one is impressive, if only because it's a functional OS in about 130,000 lines of Assembly (including TCP/IP). Haven't had much time to look around this one though.
We're Microsoft. We don't have to care.
Received email from a friend announcing the birth of their new child. Unfortunately that's all I know because:
Attached is an e-mail greeting created with American Greetings = CreataCard software from Micrografx. To view this greeting you must be running Microsoft Windows.
Sigh.
Sunday, January 02, 2000
Move along, nothing here …
Sick. Slept. Move along. Nothing here.
Monday, January 03, 2000
Sickness
Sick. Sick sick sick. That's what I am. Spent most of the day being sick in bed. I'm achy all over, but I'm not nauseus so it's not quite the flu. My nose is runny but not entirely stuffed up, so it's not quite a cold. I am coughing, but it's not continuously, so it's not quite bronchitus. I do however, get these headaches.
Last night I got ready for bed, and between the time I walked from the bathroom to the bed it felt as if someone turned the tempurature down 40 degrees (C or F, take your pick) so I ended up shivering uncontrollably for maybe five to ten minutes before I started warming up. Then I would get too hot, move and again, it would feel like someone piped an artic blast of wind down the covers and I'd be shivering again.
Going to the bathroom was fun. Get up, oh my is it cold run run shut the door start a steaming hot shower going to warm me up, do my thing, shut the steaming hot shower down, leave bathroom oh my is it @#$@# cold run run dive under covers shiver until too warm.
Sometime this morning I realized I must have been sweating up a storm because I'm drenched. Any move I do brings in fresh cold air underneath the covers. Horrible.
Sometime around 1 pm, I can actually move around without feeling cold. I get up, take a shower, dress, remove sheets from bed, combine with sleeping clothes, and proceed to put them in the wash.
The effort drained me, so I sack out on the couch.
Three hours later I get up, move the items from the wash to the dryer, and go back to sleep.
Three or four hours later I get up. I'm no longer unduely cold, my nose isn't running, I'm not coughing and I don't exactly have a headache (but I am lightheaded). I'm not exactly tired, but I'm not exactly a walking ball of energy either. It's like I want to go to sleep, but I'm to tired to. I'm still somewhat out of things right now.
Tuesday, January 04, 2000
Sickness past, but sleep still eludes …
After sleeping for something like 20 hours yesturday I'm pretty much fine, although my all ready screwed up sleeping schedule is even more screwed up than usual (here it is nearly 7 am and I'm wide awake, but for how long I don't know).
After I wrote yesturday's entry I think I fell asleep again, only to get up around 8 pm or so, pull the sheets from the dryer, made my bed and was so exausted by the effort that I fell alseep for another three hours or so.
Feeling quite light-headed, I went to the Clock for dinner (that being the closest place still open for food) and that did help some. I got home, took a shower and did other stuff to get ready for bed, but by that time I was more or less awake.
So now I find myself not tired at 7 am.
Sigh.
One potato, two potato …
From the “Oh my …” Department (via Flutterby) is the story of a woman and her love of the potato. Not for the squemish or those under 18, if you get my drift.
Wednesday, January 05, 2000
Sick, part N
Still sick. Blah. It seems that most people (if not all) that attended Friday night's little Y2K party is sick. Perhaps it was being outdoors all night long that might have done something. Or all the smoke from the bonfire. Or something.
The local Internet2 POP
Curiousity got the better of me, and I found out that my old college, FAU, is part of the Internet2. Ah, to be part of a non-commercial highspeed network.
But in looking over FAU's proposal for hooking up to the Internet2, I notice that not one of the projects requiring use of the Internet2 is from the Computer Science and Engineering Department. Sadly, I don't find that at all surprising, especially when they're having all students turn in ANSI C programs in Microsoft Word format. I kid you not.
I, or my friend Mark, could go on and on about it all, but I'll stop here.
A Clockwork Orange Owl
Now, about that logo.
The mascot of FAU is the burrowing owl, a small owl (perhaps six inches in hight) that lives under ground in burrows. To say that it actually burrows is an overstatement, since it actually doesn't burrow at all, but appropriates (read: steals) already burrowed burrows.
Around FAU they are the prime target for a large population of feral cats.
I don't know who came up with the picture but somehow I can't picture a burrowing owl hanging out with his fellow droogs at the local milk bar listening to Beethoven and engaging in a bit of the old ultra-violence.
But perhaps that's just me …
Linux bite) the Watt Tripoli!
My friend Hoade just got some speech recognition software and sent me a dictated email. Part of it reads:
I wonder if I didn't go a little too fast on the speech training. It seems that anything I say is clearly Miss Understood by this bucking basedface phase space based. OK at night wasn't saying octane no not octane docking note not docking awk and known not awk and octane octane you CK e u c k d you see today got the met at up
A delete this lettersentence the descendants to the descendants please delete this sentence
It gets more incoherent if you can believe that.
I think this technology needs a bit more work. It took what? Five years or so for the handwriting recognition on the Newton to actually work most of the time?
This is almost as amusing as the time Hoade ran his novel through Microsoft Word's “Summarize” feature. He ends his letter with:
The lecture h the lecture h the laughter h a the vector eight of the let tear that tear letter and
The letter H
The letter O
The letter A
The letter D
Will air EI'm typing this part–AIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Thursday, January 06, 2000
You have got to be kidding!
I'm still trying to get an operating system installed on an old laptop given to me. 4M RAM and 120M harddrive and it's proving quite difficult. I figured an older version of Slackware would work but in the limited searching the oldest version I found was 3.3, which won't install from the floppy if there's only 4M. It'll install from the harddrive, but well … that's the problem … I can't get it on the harddrive unless I install it from the floppy …
So it looks like I'm going to have to go a route I did when I tried installing Thix on the machine—make a bootable disk image on my local system, then move the image over.
It's either that, or I write my own operating system.
Not that I haven't seriously considered that.
Yes, I am clinically insane …
Just for the record, it is possible to install Linux (a 2.0 kernel even!) on a system with only 4M RAM and 120M Harddrive.
Why anyone would want to do such a thing is another story.
Friday, January 07, 2000
iApple's iCEO iNtroduces iMac's iDisk
You can talk about eye-candy (in the hardware, or in the software) all you want (and I must admit, I'm liking it too), but the word is COMPATABILITY. I want to access and use my files from anywhere - I want to remotely call programs on my mac from some PC (using rpc, I guess :) ). I want to fire up an FTP program and access my files. I don't want to think about it too hard. I just want to do it…
There seems to be some buzz going on about Apple's Apple's recent announcement reguarding iDisk.
Some people are worried that Apple is trying to control both ends of the Web (and Jobs has been quoted as saying just that) but if you actually read the announcement, it seems they're going to be doing that Geocities thang of offering “free” web hosting (only in this case, it's not exactly free—you have to buy a iMac first) and making it very easy to create the site (it appears local to your machine).
Not a bad idea really. Take NFS (or Samba, or AppleTalk, or … ), add authentication to the protocol (well, NFS already required authentication but not to a user level) and the whole notion of FTP, or publishing, goes away.
You do have to be aware of security issues, so it might be better to start from scratch. Might have to check out the protocol used for iDisk.
Tuesday, January 11, 2000
I hate you, you hate me, let's be business partners!
Just because a company is transglobal in scope doesn't mean it's the same company everywhere. My friend Mark works for a large international company, Siemens.
Not to be confused with Siemens Stromberg Carlson, which is across the street from him. Nor from Siemens Rolm, which, if it still exists, is down the street from him. I don't recall exactly which Siemens he works for (and for that matter, I doubt if Mark recalls either) but while they may be all wholly owned subsidiaries of Siemens, they are in fact, vicious enemies that charge each other twice as much for the same equipment their competitors would sell them.
Why this should be remains a mystery that only PHBs can fully understand (without their heads exploding).
The Guy I Almost Was
I was able to crawl out of the debt-hole and bootstrap myself into the lower middle class. For the first time in my adult life, I can afford to eat in restaurants where I don't work.
It's best to start from the beginning if you starting reading this comic. Not as outright hillarious as Sluggy Freelance but it's more subtle, a dryer form of humor.
I think programmers forget this sometimes …
Programmers do their work but once, while users are saddled with it ever thereafter.
Jef Raskin, original project lead for the Apple Macintosh
Amen!
Thursday, January 13, 2000
And this is your government on drugs
I just have to wonder how far out government will go on the “War on Drugs.” It seems now they're willing to pay for anti-drug friendly TV programming in addition to regular advertising.
I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this. On the one hand, come on, it's TV. The networks are out to make money and if someone were willing to pay even more for pro-drug programming, we'd get more pro-drug programming (remember: always follow the money). And doesn't this also following along with the “Don't Drink and Drive” campaign? I wouldn't consider the “Don't Booze and Cruise” campaign to be that bad—heck, I like that better than the Prohibition we in the United States had in the 1920s. And it applies social pressure to solve a problem than legislative pressure which to me is always a good thing.
But this is “The War on Drugs” here (or as some of my friends would say, “The War on Some Drugs”). And the government. Where does this fervor for anti-drugs come from? Certainly not from the majority of my friends. Perhaps we should follow the money?
There are drugs, and then there are drugs
The United States has this small drug problem—the government wants to outlaw the use of drugs (well, some drugs), but watch TV for any length of time and what will you see?
Advertisements for drugs.
Okay, so it's not advertisements for marijuana or cocaine or even nicotine, but if you ever feel achy, stuffy, feverish, coughy, congested, constipated, asthmatic, pimply or just plain blah, there's a pill, elixor, syrup, patch, serium, drop, spray or inhalent to make you feel all better.
I remember as a kid taking medicine to help with the achy, stuffy head, fever and coughs for all the colds and flus I got. The one thing that I distinctly remember is that no matter how much medicine I would take, I would never feel as good as quickly and for as long as the ads said I should. Over time (and for a variety of reasons) I stopped taking all those medicines when sick and just let nature run its course (except for the rare times when I would get bronchitis—then it was run to the doctor to get antibiotics).
Now I rarely get sick and when I do (usually once a year or so) it's rarely bad enough to take me entirely out (but I feel lethargic for about a month as it works its way around my body). But a few years ago I did get a nasty flu while visiting Dad out in California.
Dad gave me some over the counter medication and I was amazed that it actually seemed to work like it said it would in the advertisements.
The reason I think it worked then and not before was that I had lost any resistance I may have had to the drugs. Take drugs all year round, and your body will build up resistance to it. Forsake them, and when you need them, they'll tend to work. I suspect the ads are true for those people who have never taken drugs (or so rarely take them).
It seemed to be that in my case.
But getting back to what I was talking about. You have a slew of advertisements saying drugs are bad. Then you have another slew of advertisements saying drugs are good. Is it any wonder we have a problem here?
“Hi, I'm an annoying computer program calling you to sell … ”
Ring.
Ring.
I pick up the phone. “Hello?” I croak. See, I'm still sick.
“Hello. Did you receive a computer over the holidays?”
“No—” but even before I can finish that …
“Do you need help in setting it up?”
“No, not—”
“Let me help! My name is Mark and I'm available at your convienence to set up your computer, teach you how to use it. I can even back up your harddrive on CD. My rate is—”
Click.
This was the second solicitation I received today over the phone.
The Chairman is dead … long live the Chairman!
It was bound to happen sooner or later, but Gates resigns!Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, stepped down, with Ballmer replacing him.
Was this prompted by the DOJ investigation? Possibly, but not in the way you think. Gates has been, for pretty much the late 80s and 90s, Microsoft. The two are one. Microsoft, Gates. Gates, Microsoft. Given the way Microsoft botched the DOJ trial, I almost think that this was orchestrated from the beginning as a way to allow Gates to retire from Microsoft without the stock tanking once he left.
Gates is nothing if not a brilliant (if not outright ruthless) businessman who's entire fortune is tied to a huge paper tiger. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't liquidate his stocks fast enough.
Then again, if Gates said they were splitting the company, he could pull it off without the hold DOJ thang to blame it on. He pulled the company around 180 degrees several times in the 90s to make up for missed opportunities without so much as a pause so maybe the whole DOJ thang was a blunder on their part.
I don't know.
Monday, January 17, 2000
Hi. I want to be a recovering system administrator …
Now I know why I hate system administration so much.
I've been re-hired by the company that fired me last September to fill in for their main system admin who is on vacation this week. I should have started last Thursday, but I still can't seem to shake this cold thang.
So my first day back to the office was today. And already I'm neck deep in email fires—from SPAM coming from BBN to a failing mail server running Qmail instead of Sendmail. Or maybe it's running both—I have no idea, the previous admin who worked on it no longer works here and I just found out, I have no account on the machine.
Sigh.
Delving back into the Scary Devil Monastery is always such fun.
“Uh, I think my mouth exploded … ”
I think my mouth exploded.
Wednesday, January 19, 2000
“If I tell you what I do, I have to kill you … ”
Employers are taking a harder line. They're making anyone they do business with sign contracts promising not to share company secrets. They're meeting with employees to explain exactly what should remain confidential. Some, like Starbucks, are telling even entry-level hires that they may have to abide by agreements barring them from joining competitors if they quit.
Just a part of the plan to corporate serfdom. Not that I'm paranoid (then again, I don't work at Starbucks either).
Saturday, January 22, 2000
Dancing with the Devil
A few years later, several top-selling Marvel artists would break from the pack and form a new company called Image. In doing so, they would shift the debate from rights and principles to clout and competition, but both developments would share a common premise, one worth considering even today; that creators already have the right to control their art if they want it; all they have to do is not sign it away.
Scott McCloud, The Creator's Bill of Rights.
Remember, the next time you get that agent waving a million dollar recording contract in front of you what exactly it is you are giving up.
Wednesday, January 26, 2000
Secret agent man
The Central Intelligence Agency is vey good. So good that I had no clue I'm a CIA agent! Yes, I was caught on film in Tiajuana. I'm in the first group photo, number six. Besides, I doubt that number five is the actual head of the unit. Too obvious. No, it has to be number nine.
And yes, they are cool shades.
Tiajuana libel
I'm not sure what Spookbusters has against Jason and Wendy Simpson but whatever it is, it seems to be pretty intense.
I met them. The group photo was taken on a trip to San Diego where a large gathering from alt.society.generation-x came together to celebrate News Year's Eve for 1997. Fun trip.
But I still don't remember any CIAesque escopades I may have been involved with. Bummer.
Mild Mild Wreck
My friend Mark, Jeff and I watched Wild Wild West (or as I like to call it, “Mild Mild Wreck”). If you turn your brain off it's not that bad, but it wasn't worth the price of admission (and I paid the price of admission when it came out).
Seeing it on DVD, we played around with some of the features of the set Mark has after the movie. Mostly we zoomed in on Salma Hayek. Paused on Salma Hayek. Zoomed and paused on Salma Hayek. Ah, Salma Hayek. What can I say? Possibly the best part of the entire film.
Okay, the best part of the film.
Thursday, January 27, 2000
How do I get there from here?
On one of the mailing lists I'm on, a member posted her snailmail address, fairly confident that no one could find her place, living way out in the country like she does.
Five minutes at MapQuest and I had directions from my house in Lower Sheol to her house in Wisconsin (something like 1,750 miles door to door).
I also found another site, Etak, which does the same thing (pretty much got the same directions) plus gives out latitude and longitude information as well.
I've yet to hear back to see if the directions were any good or not.
White people with dreadlocks. What a long strange trip it's been.
So a friend comes by and takes me to this bar along the ocean (forgot the name of the bar) because a mutual friend of ours is the keyboardist for the Grateful Dead coverband Crazy Fingers (out of Ft. Lauderdale).
I'm not overly ga-ga over the Grateful Dead like most Dead Heads are, and I'm not into that whole Hippy thang either. But at the bar there were plenty of aging Hippies, neo-Hippies, HippyChicks, tie dye shirts, Birkenstocks and long flowing skirts, and white people with Dreadlocks. White people with Dreadlocks.
White people with Dreadlocks!
Typical Americans to co-opt what was a rebel statment against the whites and make it a fasion statement.
White people with Dreadlocks.
Anyway.
It was also amusing to see how many Dead Heads were into The Industry. I met at least five people who worked at various jobs within the Industry and there were probably more. My friend the keyboardist, is also in The Industry. He's also a paper millionaire, having sold his website for an ungodly amount to another company.
I think I have an easier time with a millionaire playing in a Grateful Dead coverband than I do with white people with Dreadlocks.
Friday, January 28, 2000
“We liked your site so much, we want you to submit it to us!”
First I'm a CIA agent and then I get this:
From: <Spider@BridalGowns.com>
To: Sean Conner
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 18:20:37 -0800
Subject: It's Time to Submit Your Site to BridalGowns.com
Just a brief message to notify you that your site is currently not scheduled in the pending reviews for BridalGowns.com. Brides and grooms will not be able to see your site through our upcoming service unless you submit yo ur URL at http://www.bridalgowns.com It's FREE! Now's the time!
It's just so … odd that I just had to check it out. No default background color (whoever did it assumed white—little do they realize my default is still that hideous gray color that Mosaic popularized in the early 90s) so it looks like crap.
But from the name, I suppose it's a wedding related site. But I have to wonder … they probably got my email address from my web site, so why did they spam me to have me send the URL of my site back to them? Are they totally incompetent?
And why am I asking rhetorical questions?
How about an Electric Daniel Webster?
I've done the Electric King James Bible and eventually, I'll get this journal electrified as well (and maybe improve the writing style to boot!).
But in the mean time the next fairly easy thing to work on (unlike my ideas for Shakespeare) is a dictionary. I have several to choose from, and it's more usuable for more people than the Bible (but the journal/web log module I want to write it going to be big).
It seems easy.
http://literature.conman.org/webster/organization
brings up the defintion for “organization,” while
http://literature.conman.org/webster/o
Brings up all the definitions beginging with “o.”
But there's a problem. Say I want to do something like:
http://literature.conman.org/hackers.dictionary/ai
To bring up all the technical terms beginning with “ai.” Nice, only there there exists several entires starting with “ai,” including the very term “AI.” What if I just want “ai?” Or all terms starting with “ai?”
Not an easy problem then, is it?
I'm not about to get into the navigation schemes yet.
And how about an end-run around Open Source?
Create a new PC hardware architecture using a modified Transmeta Crusoe CPU at it's heart. The CPU is modified to contain an encryption/decryption engine and the code morphing software is updated to include the decryption of encrypted executable code. Code morphing is a general conversion process and there's nothing that says that the binary source has itself got to be executable on some existing CPU. As the results of code morphing appear only within an internal instruction cache it's very difficult to gain access to the unencrypted executable program code.
I get this dread feeling that the Crusoe CPU from Transmeta is going to be used as an end-run around Open Source software. Just when you thought we were getting away from proprietary systems …
My celebrity match is …
My Celebrity Match is Shania Twain. Not a bad choice, even if I don't like country music all that much.
Sunday, January 30, 2000
Now that's darned rude!
It's 5:30. I'm with some friends when I get beeped. It's my home number. I call. It's my roommate. His RedHat 6.0 box was hacked. What should he do?
I mention a few things to look for, but it looks bad. Who ever broke in either got spooked, or was feeling malicious and the final two commands we found in the .bash_history file were:
rm -rf /var/log rm -rf /*
My roommate, Rob, managed to stop it before it did more damage, but they still wiped out /boot, /bin and parts of /dev. Using Tom's RootBoot disk he was able to survey the damage and then waited until I got home.
From what I've been able to determine, it appears that some script kiddie was running a program to look for exploitable boxes (RedHat 6.0) because around noon yesturday someone tried to FTP into my box and Rob's other box from Harvard. This said script kiddie then had a list of hosts to exploit today and Rob's box was broken into and damaged around 5:30 pm EST.
Breaking in and looking around is one thing. Maliciously deleting files is another.
Monday, January 31, 2000
a visit to Obnoxico, Inc.
After lunch, Mark and I headed over to WalMart to kill some time (neither one of us had to be at work today).
“You realize,” Mark said, “that there are only four different layouts for WalMarts?”
“Easier to franchise,” I said. “Sign here, and pick layouts one, two, three or four.”
“And you realize that whenever one of these go up, the local Mom-n-Pop shops go out of business,” said Mark.
“Of course,” I replied (and yes, we did actually have this conversation), “How else can they compete with large volume cheaply made merchandise from Asia? And if a store in an area is not that profitable, who cares? The rest of the collective can support a non-profiting store for a while.”
Really, I hear these stories about communities that try to make WalMarts illegal, or otherwise make it very difficult for them to open up stores. But really, if a community really cared enough to keep a WalMart out, then the community as a whole should just boycott the store. If no one goes to WalMarts, then it brings in no money and in due time it will shut down.
Simple economics. Yet why the furvor and laws? Because a select few people think they know better than the community.
Sure, what WalMart does isn't nice. And I tend to prefer local stores over larger chains anyway. But on the flip side, for large volume cheaply made merchandise from Asia and 24-hour access, you really can't beat WalMart. And my schedule that is soemthing to keep in mind.
Although the selection in the entertainment area is pretty spotty. Unless you like Brittany Spheres or the movie “Joan of Arc” (man did that hit the video stores fast) you don't have much choice.
But they do sell Nerf guns. Of which Mark bought one for work.
Camquest
After lunch and killing some time at Walmart, Mark and I headed to Office Depot to check to see if they had any webcams.
After the experiments I did with my digital camera and using it as a webcam, Mark got the itch to do something similar. Like me, he is Microsoft free.
And that's the main problem. Most new webcams are now USB based, and the USB support for Linux is spotty at best, and with that, only with the latest development kernels. Mark and I are still running Linux 2.0 kernels (why fix it when it isn't broken?).
And the one webcam that isn't USB based, the Logitech Quickcam VC, doesn't have Linux drivers—nor is Logitech being generous with programming informtation; they're downright hostile and no information is available. The older Connectix ones (Logitech bought Connectix) are supported under Linux.
There doesn't seem to be any reason why Logitech should keep this information under wraps, unless:
- Logitech doesn't want others to know just how lousy the hardware is.
- Logitech is getting presure from some company on high not to release information that would allow other competing operating systems to use the hardware (no names, but its initials are <cough>Microsoft<cough>—seriously, many companies are afraid of doing anything which might anger the Redmond giant and giving any OS competitors any slight edge might anger them).
- Logitech management (or rather, the lawyers) are relunctant to release anything which might be considered Intellectual Property.
I suspect the truth is “all of the above” to some degree.
Who owns who?
In trying to find the official Nerf site, I obviously tried http://www.nerf.com. Imagine my surprise when I ended up at Hasbro Interactive | Atari!
And according to the Nerf Gun FAQ, there is no official Nerf site.
Bummer.
Repairs
I worked some more on the digital camera I have. The problem is one of focus. Or rather, the lack thereof.
The camera is a fixed-focus camera and you have to take the unit practically apart to refocus it. The lens assembly consists of two cylinders, one that slides inside another, with a screw/spring assembly on one side to adjust the position of the inner cylinder, which houses the lens, against the outer cylinder, which attaches to the mount on which the CCD rests.
When last I left it, I thought that since the screw/spring assembly was on one side, when tightened, one side was pulled in closer than the other side, thus leading to pictures that were half focused. My thought was to remove the screw/spring assembly, file down the end of the outter cylinder, allowing the inner one to adjust closer, and use some glue to hold it in place.
No avail.
During the machinations, I removed the blue filter that sits above the CCD. Interesting results. Two exceedingly blurry pictures that I find rather amusing:
Okay, so I'm not getting anywhere. I dig up the screw/spring assembly (I took the thing off back last November). The glue thing wasn't working (and I didn't have the right glue anyway, so it wasn't holding very well) so I reattached the screw/spring assembly minus one small wire piece that seemed to work against the spring (go figure).
So, with CCD filter, and newly reassembled cylinder assembly back in place, a few tweaks and finally success! (I'm holding a small Phillips screw driver in my mouth, and I'm hold up my hand to distinquish this photo from the 21 other ones I took)
Tuesday, February 01, 2000
The Purpose of Copyright
Understanding the root cause and the dangers of this shift requires exposing the most fundamental and most common misconception concerning the underlying purpose of the monopoly granted by our copyright law. The primary purpose of copyright is not, as many people believe, to protect authors against those who would steal the fruits of their labor. However, this misconception, repeated so often that it has become accepted among the public as true, poses serious dangers to the core purpose that copyright law is designed to serve.
Open Spaces Magazine - The Purpose of Copyright by Lydia Pallas Loren [via Camworld]
Are we slowing heading towards a time when only corporations can own intellectual property? I'm sure corporations wouldn't mind …
“I drove my Chevy to the levee … ”
I'm in the car waiting for lunch when I hear this new remake of American Pie by this lush female singer. Of course immediately after the song the radio station launches into this extended set of commercials that last the way home so I don't know who did the song.But everytime I hear that song, even if it is the original version, I can't help but think of Wierd Al's version.
Databases schmatabases …
I know Mark won't agree, but the advice jwz gives about databases agrees with mine.And his experience in mail summary files is yet another datapoint in his avoidance of databases.
Wednesday, February 02, 2000
A load of Microsoft
Some random Microsoft links from Mark. Read and enjoy.
Not a load of Microsoft
And some more random (non-Microsoft) links from Mark:
Spam spam spam spam!
I'm checking my email when I come across this:From: <promotion_ideas@email.com>
To: Sean Conner
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 13:45:01
Subject: Sean, your website…This message is for Sean Conner
Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
Hi Sean,
My first thought is Holy Cow! The Sun Sentinel wants to do a story on my site! And they even spelled my name right!
In my excitement I skip a crucial paragraph and pick up here:
While visiting your site I noticed your web pages could use a few simple adjustments to make them easier to find on the search engines. I also noticed your page layout and customer navigation could be optimized to increase customer responsiveness.
Okay, now I know something is wrong. My pages are already easy to find on the search engines. Heck, they're the only agents coming to my website with any regularity and any searches on “Sean Conner” or “Captain Napalm” usually bring back links to my website on the first or second page (at worse). Now, what was that paragraph I missed?
I am writing to you because you are listed as the site administrator at www.sunsent.com and I have some information that should be of interest to you.
What the … ? News to me. Quick check at Network Solutions:
Registrant:
Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel (SUNSENT-DOM)
200 East Las Olas Blvd
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
Domain Name: SUNSENT.COM
Administrative Contact:
Meiners, Michael (MM130) meiners@SUNSENT.COM
(305) 356-4744
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Conner, Sean (SC47) spc@armigeron.com
(407) 395-6655
Record last updated on 16-Dec-1996.
Record created on 16-Mar-1994.
Database last updated on 2-Feb-2000 03:18:36 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS.GATE.NET 199.227.0.9
NWFOCUS.WA.COM 192.135.191.3
Ah, now it's clear. Spam.
I was most likely still working at CyberGate when this was registered. At the time, I was Head Sysadmin, Head Programmer, Head Technical Support and Chief Bottle Washer (I left shortly thereafter, that being my first real experience with the whole net.slave thang). The records never got updated.
And I know the email was spam because the site doesn't exist anymore.
Thursday, February 03, 2000
Reply-To Munging: Is it the Right Thing?
There's a major controversy on a mailing list I'm subscribed to. The list in question (about classic computers) had to change hosts and the software used to manage the list changed.The upshot is that under the old software, the Reply-To: field was set to be the list itself. That meant that if you wanted to send a private reply, you had to change the address the message was being sent to. As a consequence, a few private messages were sent to the list by mistake.
The new software does not set the Reply-To: field. So to reply to the list, you have to ether change the address the message was being sent to, or do a group reply, which sends a copy to the list as well as to the original sender.
A subtle change, but one that has thrown the list in a tizzy. Some people (like me) like the old behavior. Some like the new behavior (and are telling the ones that like the old behavior to deal or upgrade—odd considering that most accessing the list are using computers deemed too old to use by the rest of society).
The new change was justified by the essay “Reply-To” Munging Considered Harmful by Chip Rosenthal (I think Chip is sore because he accidentally sent private mail to a public list by mistake). But then Simon Hill, in his Reply-To Considered Useful notes that RFC-822 allows munging of the Reply-To: field:
4.4.3. REPLY-TO / RESENT-REPLY-TO
This field provides a general mechanism for indicating any
mailbox(es) to which responses are to be sent. Three typical
uses for this feature can be distinguished. In the first
case, the author(s) may not have regular machine-based mail-
boxes and therefore wish(es) to indicate an alternate machine
address. In the second case, an author may wish additional
persons to be made aware of, or responsible for, replies. A
somewhat different use may be of some help to "text message
teleconferencing" groups equipped with automatic distribution
services: include the address of that service in the "Reply-
To" field of all messages submitted to the teleconference;
then participants can "reply" to conference submissions to
guarantee the correct distribution of any submission of their
own.
(emphasis added). So. There it is.
But that still hasn't settled the list. Sigh.
More than you ever wanted to know about Reply-To munging
More info on the email snafu: Rich Lafferty replied with:Note: The “Reply-To” field is added by the originator and serves to direct replies, whereas the “Return-Path” field is used to identify a path back to the originator. [This is from section 4.3.1 of RFC-822. But see section 4.4.3 for a different interpretation. -Sean]
Although I'm starting to wonder if this isn't symptomatic of a majordomo bug, or at least a design flaw. It would make sense to me to configure Majordomo such that the Reply-To points to the list *unless* the originator added its own Reply-To, in which case it would leave that there. That way, you'd have discussion on the list except when the original poster intended otherwise, which strikes me as something that the original poster might very well want. This would satisfy the objection of lost information (which strikes me as the only thing that isn't a question of preference or user-agent configuration – when majordomo strips a reply-to, it's *gone*) and the objection of encouraging public discussion (in that unless otherwise specified by the originator, the reply is directed to the list).
Pete Turnbull replied with:
Except that mailing lists are not what RFC 822 defined “Reply-to:” for. Its primary purpose is quite different; it's to force a reply to a valid address when the sender's “From:” is not valid.
Quote: “The `Reply-To' field is added by the originator”
The RFC 822 method would be to set the “From:” field to [mailing list address], and set the “Sender:” field to the name of the person who originated the message (which is exactly the opposite to what majordomo is doing, I notice, but that's perfectly legitimate).
So, where does this get us? Well, I send a message to a mailing list:
From: <sean@conman.org>
To: <flamefest@lists.tld>
The mailing list software gets it, and when it sends it out:
From: <flamefest@lists.tld>
Sender: <sean@conman.org>
To: <joesixpack@somesite.tld>
But, if for some reason I want replies (to me) to go elsewhere, I send:
From: <sean@conman.org>
To: <flamefest@lists.tld>
Reply-To: <sean@randomsite.tld>
And what the mailing list software sends out:
From: <flamefest@lists.tld>
Sender: <sean@conman.org>
To: <joesixpack@somesite.tld>
Reply-To: <sean@randomsite.tld>
But we'll see …
Friday, February 04, 2000
A silly variation
“Welcome to the Bridge of Death. You must answer me these questions three 'ere the other side you see. What is your name?”“Arthur, King of the Brittons.”
“And what is your quest?”
“I seek the Holy Grail.”
“What year was DOS 3.3 released?”
“What? What do you mean? DOS 3.3 for the IBM PC or Apple ][?”
“Uh, er … I don't know. Aiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…”
Rebuilding Blues
My roomate Rob is rebuilding his workstation that was hacked the other day. He could repair it by rebuilding the damaged directories but he feels it's easier to resintall and I probably would do the same myself. There is stuff he wants to save but since Tom's RootBoot disk doesn't have drivers for his network card he came in asking if I had a spare IDE drive he could borrow.Possibly, but let's see if there is something easier first. Could he just install without formatting the disks? No, there are some configuration files he wants to save. Hmmmm … he's got this swap partition that's big enough to hold what he wants. fdisk to change it to Linux native, then mke2fs to format it. Copy the files he wants, reinstall, then afterwards, copy the files off, and turn it back to swap space.
It's what I did when I installed Linux on my laptop.
This is EMAIL, not FTP …
The consensus on the mailing list from yesturday about Reply-To: munging is that Reply-To: is The Right Thing. The list is back to the old behavior and everyone has stopped complaining.The topic now (very light traffic on this) is the removal of HTML in email. Or rather, HTML and attachments altogether, which I am in full agreement with. Attachments are evil (heck, MIME is eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil but that's another rant); the worst I saw (when I worked at an ISP) was some guy who blew his disk quota by sending not only the files he was working on, but the application as well, so he could work on them from home.
The ISP allows 10M of disk space, which is quite generous for email (for the record, I currently have 14M of email saved (everything I write gets saved just in case) and it works out to 3,457 messages (or an average of 4k per message and yes, a lot of those can be deleted).
Anyway, one of the requests, from Peter Turnbull, was:
My request-for-enhancement is:
``do something'' about HTML, or better still, ``do something'' about
any ``multipart/alternative'' posting (which would include M$
richtext, with those application/ms-tnef attachments).
Options I can think of:
a) silently discard any such postings (probably not a good idea)
b) bounce them back to the author, with an explanation of why bounced
c) remove the non-text part
d) combination of (b) and (c)
e) accept, but warn the author (who may not realise (s)he's sent HTML)
Can't argue with those.
Under Construction
Yes, the links for other entries here are broken. I'm still working on how I want to actually store and serve all these entries up so until that is done, links for other entries will be broken.External entries however, are fine.
The status quo must surely hate this
Normally, I just tollerate Dave Wiener and what he says and his Scripting News site comes across as one extended advertising for his software, but maybe what he has to say is worth listening to at times.Then I realized that such an externally defined vision had already been forced on the technology industry. The standards of the Internet, HTTP, HTML and URLs; and perhaps XML, which is a simple formalization of HTML. To go to the next step the leaders of technology merely have to agree to stop struggling against these standards, and to share the knowledge they have developed around them. The web is ready-made for a shared vision.
. . .
First, you should know that there are organizations whose sole purpose is to define and patent new business processes that build on the Internet. Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.Com, has 60 full-time people working in teams to do nothing more than generate patents. No engineering, no scaling issues, no customer satisfaction requirements (although Walker's company appears to be good at this too), they just a file a claim at various patent offices, and wait for the engineering of the Internet to catch up. A land-grab business.
. . .
If you define success in terms of continuing to do the same old thing, you will lose. This is the message that causes so much dissonance at Davos and at Seybold. The people who had a good thing going before the Internet are angry. If they draw a line in the sand, as Sumner Redstone of Viacom did so insistently, sorry it's off to glue factory. But if you're willing to risk it all on your intelligence, experience *and* your enthusiasm for the Internet, you will win. But you have to be willing to change.
. . .
Monday, February 07, 2000
There's a casino across the street …
When I moved here 12 years ago, across the street (the main street, Sample Road in Coconut Creek, Florida) was this large field. A rare site in Lower Sheol where any available piece of undeveloped land doesn't remain undeveloped for very long.But it lasted a few years, until Wayne Hyzinga (sp?), Garbageman Billionair Extrodinaire, financed the building of an AutoNation there across the street, then sold it (for profit mind you) to one of his holding companies. Ah, the wheeling and dealing life of a billionaire.
And so it was until a few weeks ago when the AutoNation suddenly closed its doors across the street. The parking lot, once full of quality used cars at an affordable, no haggle price, was empty.
And so it was.
So I was driving home tonight when I saw these placards along the road, and in primary colors splashed across the face, I saw:
The Coconut Creek Casino! Parking—Turn here!
And all the placards were leading towards the AutoNation parking lot. Great! I thought. They built a casino across the street!
So I decide to check things out. I park the car at home, and amble my way over across the street. I see a few cars parked there, but nothing that looks remotely like a casino. I walk up to the front entrance of the now closed AutoNation and find a security-type guy there in one of those golfcart like vehicles.
“So, where's the casino?” I ask.
“Down the street. Do you know where the Toyota dealership is?”
“Yes,” I said. The Al Hendrickson Toyota Dealership is down the street from me.
“It's right behind there. The parking lot isn't finished yet so they're using this as a temporary parking lot. The shuttle bus should be here in a minute.”
“No, that's okay. I was just curious.” And I walked off.
I guessed that the Seminole Indians had the thing built, and when lo, I was right.
If this thing is open 24 hours like all other casinos I've been to, then that adds one more fine dining establishment to partake of fine food after midnight to the local Clock and Denny's. As I see it, the Seminole Indians had the thing built.
Searching for Coconut Creek …
We are a
young couple living in Coconut Creek
MAKE
THOUSANDS - Coconut Creek Florida
[sigh]
FLAUSA Visit Florida -
Florida Tour - Southeast Florida and the Keys Attractions
[horrible design - took over two minutes to load all
the graphics and I have a dedicated 128kbps ISDN line but they do get some
points—it looks okay in Lynx (although the HTML file itself is almost 200K
in size). And
Butterfly
World is just down the street from me]
Wednesday, February 09, 2000
“I know I left it here somewhere … ”
I just spent the past few hours working on this journalblog, updating the pages and internal links, getting ready to get this thing live hopefully in the next few days. Internal links are still worthless, but hey, only a few people should be reading this anyway.Now I just have to find some code I wrote a few months ago in preparation for the Electric King James site. If I can find it, and adapt it to use strings instead of integers, then I can retrofit it into mod_litbook and use it in (tenanively titled) mod_jb.
But that's the problem … I don't even remember what I called it, nor where I stuff the code. And I have a lot of code on this system.
Sigh.
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
On Monday (which I didn't report), I went to Atlantic Internet to do some consulting. One of the salespeople there is involved in some projects and I was brought in to help.While there, the box being used, a RedHat 6.0 distribution, appeared to have been compromised. No like my roommate's box but still, syslogd wasn't running like it should, and there appeared to be an abnormal amount of httpd's running, but it's a webserver so I didn't think anything of it.
I shut off ftpd and added entries to /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny until it could be patched up or upgraded.
Fast forward to today (way early or way late, take your pick) and I'm reading Slashdot when I come across the article about some recent DoS attacks against some very large sites. In the discussion, I follow one of the links to an analysis of stacheldraht, a program that is suspected to have been used in the DoS. And the code seems to have been written for Solaris 2.x and Linux, specifically the RedHat 6.0 distribution.
Like TFN, C macros ("config.h") define values used for expressing commands, replacement argument vectors ("HIDEME" and "HIDEKIDS") to conceal program names, etc.:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- #ifndef _CONFIG_H /* user defined values for the teletubby flood network */ #define HIDEME "(kswapd)" #define HIDEKIDS "httpd" #define CHILDS 10
The box in question, like I stated, is a RedHat 6.0. What I haven't mentioned is that it's sitting behind a T3. And there were an abnormally large number of httpd's running.
I have a bad feeling about this.
No problem
Finally was able to check the machine today. It's clean.So where are the fault-tolerant Unix systems of today?
… and by October of 1990 a complete nanokernel was running on the Omron Luna/88K. The current nanokernel contains approximately 20,000 lines of C code and less than 2,000 lines of assembler code….
In addition, the ability to recover all run-time kernel data from checkpointed state means that an interruption of power does not disrupt running programs. Typically, the system loses only the last few seconds of keyboard input. At UNIFORUM '90, Key Logic pulled the plug on our UNIX system on demand. Within 30 seconds of power restoration, the system had resumed processing, complete with all windows and state that had previously been on the display. We are aware of no other UNIX implementation with this feature today….
The paging system is tied to the checkpoint mechanism, and is discussed in the section on checkpointing, below. Persistence extends across system shutdown and power failure. Several IBM 4341 systems ran for more than three years across power failures without a logical interruption of service.
KeyKOS Nanokernel Architecture
Accordingly, KeyKOS also received a B3 security rating, and it's a multitasking, multiuser system. At best, Unix can get a C2, and Windows NT can get that if it's networking is removed. I don't think it's generally available, but one that is based upon KeyKOS, EROS, is available, and GPLed.
I'm so vain. I bet I think this website is about me.
I get curious at times. At one point I wanted to register spc.com, being my initials and whatnot, but Time Magazine registered that one on July 14, 1994. I've never bothered to ask if I could have it, but I can't imagine what they're using it for (nothing, as I can tell).So I decide to check out spc.org, which seems to be a better domain for my use anyway. When I tried a few years ago, it was taken but I forgot who had it. The current owners registered it June 7, 1997. So I might have gotten it had I been on the ball three years ago, but I wasn't.
They seem to be using though, so I can't complain there.
And that leaves spc.net, which was registered to the Special Products Company on June 22, 1996, and they seem to be using it as well.
I can't have conman.com because that is being sit upon by a domain name speculator company, noname.com.
But the big surprise is conman.net. Last time I checked (a few weeks ago) it was being held by noname.com but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. It is now held by Conner Huff.
Now, conner.com is owned by Seagate, the harddrive manufacturer. Understandable, Conner used to be a well-known harddrive manufacturer before being bought out by Seagate. conner.org and conner.net are owned by MailBank.com, an organization that gives out email addresses. As of today, sean@conner.org is available as an email address, but at US$9.95/month, I think I'll stick with what I have.
Thursday, February 10, 2000
“I'm fooling you and you don't like it!”
So, I'm searching through the www.spc.org website when I come to this lovely page with one of those stereograms. I have no problem in seeing the item inside the picture, but I don't think I see it “correctly” so to speak. I say that because while the object (in this case, a jack) does pop out, the parts that pop out are popped inward, not outward. For example, if the object is supposed to be a ball floating off the page, I see the object floating, but I see it as a bowl, not a ball. It's definitely a wierd experience.I suspect that I see these objects “inside-out” (for lack of a better term) because my left eye is dominant (I'm lefthanded, by the way) wereas most people are right-eye dominant.
You can easily test this by holding your hands out in front of you, at arm's length, using your fingers to make a hole to view through. Focus on an object that's about 20 feet away (or further). Now, close one eye. If you can still see the object, that is your dominant eye (or conversely, if you can't see it, then your other eye is dominant).
Cheeeeeeeeese!
Well, Mark finally got his webcam going, completely under Linux.Earlier today we talked and he was wondering how to get the images up to the server. He didn't want to use FTP as it seems that no one can actually write a version that isn't Swiss Cheese, nor did he want to use scp as that would require him manually typing in a password, or leaving one around in a script on his box.
I offered to write some programs, a client on his end, a server on the server end here that does nothing but copy the image up. Simple enough in theory.
But the details get pretty gory pretty quickly.
But then it hit me—he's running a webserver on his end. Easy enough to have the camera software dump the picture into a web-accessable place on his box, then have the server here use wget to download the image.
The hard part came in configuring Apache.
Problem one: restrict access on his side. Seems to be broken somewhat on his side. Might be a 1.3.3 problem. We're still working on this.
Problem two: Content expiry on the server side. Fixed after some experimentation. In the webpage he has:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="60">
And in an .htaccess file he has:
ExpiresActive On ExpiresDefault A60 ExpiresByType image/jpg A60
And that seems to do the proper job.
Friday, February 11, 2000
It's not exactly a protocol …
LiveJournal.com is a free service here on the Internet that allows you to create and customize your very own “live journal” … an up-to-the-minute log of whatever you're doing, when you're doing it. It's free, it's fun, it's easy to use!
LiveJournal.com, via Flutterby
The actual link from Flutterby was to the LiveJournal protocol. The protocol itself it nothing more than a documentation of their CGI interface. It's documented with the intention of other people writing software to interface to the CGI, but a webform would work just as well (or at least support the HTTP POST method).
For the individual journals, you can only see an overview of the last X number of entries, in reverse order of course (newest to oldest, and even the entires made within a single day are newest to oldest).
The archive section lists each month, with a link per day (the text of the link is the number of individual entries that day). The day is then presented in chronological order. But, you can't request all the entries for a month. For instance: Bethany's LiveJournal Calendar. Select a day, say today.
Now, take a look at the URL:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/bethany/day?year=2000&month=2&day=11
Munging it up, I left off the day portion and got:
Errors occurred processing this page:
- Corrupt or non-existant day.
- Invalid day.
(nevermind that is the full text of what I got back—completely non-standard HTML). Okay, what if I change the URL to read:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/bethany/month?year=2000&month=11
Would I then get all of February's entries? Nope. Just a 404 error (and an error page that again, isn't HTML compliant). Then again, I don't think anyone is really working on the stuff I'm working on, but when I get this out there, that should raise the bar a bit (hope hope).
LiveJournal isn't a bad service but there doesn't seem to be many journals there I find worth reading (with most entries being a line or two at best).
BML … because it's better
Came across BML, a Better Markup Language. Seems promising actually. And LiveJournal uses it. I'm looking into it—it has some interesting ideas.Saturday, February 12, 2000
Left side, right side, where do you want the couch?
So for those of you following at home, I'm playing around a bit with the layout here. There is this layout you are looking at right now.This page has a navigation bar along the right side, pointing to the individual links for the past seven days (none of the links work by the way. It's using a URL scheme that I'm planning on using but isn't functional yet). I did it this way for users of Lynx—it lays out tables that go left to right top to bottom; not the best way to support tables, but hey, it tries. And I felt that innundating a Lynx user with a list of links is bad. Better to bring the content first then a list of (possibly) useless links.
But I did this page, and under Lynx it actually isn't too bad. The first link is to the content (if in fact, the link works). And at the default 80x24 TTY screen size, there's only two, maybe three screens full of links before you get to the content. Oddly enough, I like it.
So, what do you think, oh home audience?
“Next on Yahoo—Websites about narconecrophilaphobia!”
I finally figured out what web portals are—portals are to the web what networks are to television; they want to control what you see and would rather you didn't change the channel.It's a weak analogy, but I think it's a good one.
(The title for this section if the fear of falling asleep and having sex with zombies, if you must know)
Sunday, February 13, 2000
Good Grief
Via Scripting News comes the news that Charles Schulz died today.Tuesday, February 15, 2000
Spring cleaning just a tad too early …
So I finally decided to clean the Computer Room.It's not like I have a death of projects I'm working on, but one of the projects is finally getting NetBSD installed on two HP/Apollo 400's I recieved a few years ago but couldn't because of a few problems.
The original intent was to write an OS for the things, but information about the HPs weren't that easy to get (not that I tried really hard). After a year or two I learned that NetBSD was ported.
That lead to problem number two: I had the wrong keyboard. The HP/Apollos I received had the Domain keyboard/mouse, which NetBSD doesn't support, and apparently the boot process for DomainOS is undocumented enough that no one has really bothered. Had I an HP-HIL keyboard/mouse, then I would be in business.
Well, I recently borrowed one and my friend Mark is working on getting me an HP-HIL adaptor so I can use an IBM keyboard like God intended instead of the abomination that HP calls a keyboard.
Have I mentioned I'm very picky about keyboards? That the only keyboards I use are IBM AT or PS/2 style keyboards? Anyway, I digress …
So, easy enough to proceed, right?
Nope. Problem number three: there is no more space in the Computer Room. I could barely make my way into the room. So, before I can install NetBSD I have to clean the room and rearrange it. It was so bad I didn't even recall how the network was set up (thin-net, aka cheap net. I had black cables running everywhere).
So I spent most of last night schlepping computers out to the living room and dining room. The Computer Room is now clean, but the rest of the house …
So now I'm in the process of schlepping everything back, only I don't want to schlep everything back in. I have no idea what I'm going to do with half the stuff. I don't use half the stuff and that's the problem.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to get NetBSD reinstalled and I'm having to recompile Linux on my primary server here in the Computer Room because it doesn't have RARP (Reverse Address Resultion Protocol) built in, which is needed to do an initial netboot of NetBSD.
Blah … where's a bulldozer when I need one?
Installation blues
An update on the HP/NetBSD front: and that's the only thing that's up.The boot process requires NFS. I don't trust NFS (never have, never bothered to install it on the home system here). Sigh. Download, install, configure.
So I have rbootd and rarp working on Linus. Turn on the HP. Using some network monitoring software I wrote (a near-clone of tcpdump that outputs in a more concise mannor) I can see the HP making requests of rbootp.
And one lone NFS packet:
IPv4 208.26.72.7 255.255.255.255 UDP 1023 111
So far no luck getting past that.
Wednesday, February 16, 2000
For those complaining that Linux is too easy to install …
Well, the first of two HPs is now online and running NetBSD, thanks to the help of Mark. It seems I needed to have bootparamd running, as well as NFS. Also, the documentation neglected to mention that you might, just might, need to hook a terminal up to the machine.Lo, there was SYS_INST, running not on the console (the wonderful 21" monitor) but on the serial port. Sigh. After that it was a painfully long process of transfering the installation program via NFS (although that may be due to the logging we were doing) then the actual install process (via FTP, much faster).
Slackware Linux was a breeze to install compared to this. The whole disk labeling is confusing—I find the PC scheme much easier to deal with (although Mark finds the PC scheme too braindead and likes the added complexity that disk labels bring. Go figure). We still haven't figured out how to get the system to boot off the drive, but it is running.
More on the exact steps later …
Thursday, February 17, 2000
Natural Languages and P—- Languages
The moral is that Perl is a great language for implementing haiku … but Python is rather better at implementing functional specs.
Via Slashdot, A comment about Python vs. Perl
A rather good comment about one of the reasons I dislike Perl. I also dislike Python (significant whitespace?) but if I had to choose between the two, I would probably use Python.
A clear and present separation
Iaijutsu sounds interesting, a web server that separates content, presentation and logic, which is what I'm trying to do. But at this time, the website seems to be down. Or rather, DNS is reporting back an error.Maybe I'll get back to this some other time. Even if it is written in Perl.
Saturday, February 19, 2000
The Battle of the AC, Part I
Whoever designed my condo should be taken out and shot.The AC is shot. Well, the inside portion thereof. So today it's being replaced.
To replace the unit, the workmen have to tear down a portion of the ceiling where the unit is. Oh that, and take down the front door.
This is why I didn't have the inside part replaced last year when I had AC problems.
Joy.
The Battle of the AC, Part II
“Hey Sean,” one crewmember asks. “Do you have a bucket?”“Sure,” I said. Went outside to the utility closet and grabbed a large bucket. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” He walks over to the unit, holds the bucket up to the unit being replaced, and several gallons of water pour forth.
Oh my.
Sunday, February 20, 2000
A method and aparatus for obtaining quantities comprised of groups of smaller quantities grouped and counted for the larger quantity.
It was never the object of patent laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax on the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of unknown liability lawsuits and vexatious accounting for profits made in good faith.
–U.S. Supreme Court, Atlantic Works vs. Brady, 1882
Via Technocrat.net, this article about software and business patents. One of these days I'll get around to patenting a method and aparatus for obtaining quantities comprised of groups of smaller quantities grouped and counted for the larger quantity.
Or as translated from patent-speak, addition.
Wednesday, February 23, 2000
“Uh, my mouth just exploded.”
My roommate Rob came into the Computer Room this morning and asked if I wanted to go to lunch. He was going out with some of the tech crew from Atlantic Internet (who so kindly provide my connectivity) and wanted to know if I wanted to go along. I wasn't all that hungry, having actually had breakfast before 8am (long hacking run last night, more on that later) but since I decided to stay up anyway (cleaning woman—yes I'm that lazy) why not?We ended up going to Lucille's, a local BBQ place in Boca Raton. I was feeling a bit sluggish by the time the food arrived, and the waitress, at Shane's request, brought over not one, but two of the hottest sauces currently available.
I remember Endorphine Rush from the last time I was there. The other one was a new one they just got: Blair's After Death Sauce. I was the only one there to actually try it.
The opening was slightly crusted over with dried sauce so it took some coaxing to get a small dab out, which is all I dared. Then dipped my fork into the dab, then tried it.
“Oh—” is all I got out before slamming down my iced tea while motioning wildly at the waitress for more. She quickly returned with a glass of milk, which I slammed down, and by that time she had a refill on the iced tea, which I nearly slammed down. And when I say “slammed down,” I mean chug. Big time. Like I've never chugged before.
I was no longer tired. I was wide awake after that.
And checking the bottle after a few minutes showed the sauce had eaten away at the drived sauce crust over the end of the bottle. Yikes!
Endorphine Rush wasn't that bad. No effect for a few seconds then WHAM! It hits. Pretty hard. Blair's After Death Sauce hits fast and hard. Liquid fire this was. Ouch. Wasabi doesn't hit this hard with so little.
Those Computer Blues …
I haven't updated in the past few days. That's okay, because I have an excuse: my computer was dying.Well, it wasn't exactly dying, but X Windows—sorry, A Windowing System Called X, was dying. It happened last week when the mouse suddenly went spastic then died. Then shortly thereafter A Windowing System Called X died too. Most horrible. Even worse, I didn't have the CD I installed Linux from (nor a CD-ROM but that's beside the point). Even worse, it was the Metrolink X Server that died.
The system was a RedHat 5.0 system. I did not want to upgrade or install RedHat 6.0 or 6.1. I wanted 5.2. Mark found his copy of RedHat 5.2.
So, I decided it was probably time to do a fresh install. I slapped a 1G drive, backed up what needed to be backed up (and missed /root and /tmp in the process—oh well, probably didn't need those files anyway) and then proceeded to the installation.
I've found out that trying to install RedHat 5.2 across the network from a RedHat 6.1 box is a futile exercise. NFS or FTP the network performance was so poor that doing a disk install of Slackware would be faster.
Then it hit me—I was reinstalling my primary nameserver. This is also the nameserver that resolves reverse lookups. Even my roommate's computer would eventually contact my machine for reverse lookups on the IP addresses.
Ooops.
Quickly fix that, but still find that installing RedHat 5.2 from a RedHat 6.1 box is a futile exercise.
I tried three CD-ROM drives in the computer and not once was it recognized. Of course I was putting the CD-ROM in the second IDE controller on the motherboard but I think the second IDE controller doesn't work. Disconnect the 1G drive and put the CD-ROM in there, and it worked (of course at first I thought it didn't since the BIOS wouldn't recognize it. Mark was like “Duh! It's not IDE! It's ATAPI. The linux kernel will find it.”
The install went smoothly. I repartitioned the drives the way I like (4M /boot, twice the RAM for swap, and the rest for /) and installed RedHat 5.2. I was expecting the Metrolink X server to install, but it didn't.
Twice more and it still didn't. Guess Metrolink stopped shipping their server with RedHat. And XFree86 doesn't support my card (or at least it didn't when RedHat 5.2 came out and like I said, I'm not going RedHat 6.x nor spending hours downloading the current XFree86 and configuring it).
I finally got X working though, and restored from the backup IDE drive.
Oh, and there was that extended hacking session last night.
Hack the Source
So I wound up at Mark's house last night. He wanted to get AppleTalk running so he could mount his Linux drives on his Macs.He was going to do this on his primary development machine kwalitee, but was relunctant to loose the uptime on it. I suggested ortho, his primary file server.
He was overwhelmed by the sheer obviousness of the suggestion.
Compile kernel. Download userland code. Install. Reboot. Select “Chooser” on the Mac. And there is ortho, ready to serve up files. We were both amazed at how easy it was—especially given the difficulty of Samba, or the insanity that are the automounter documentation (the man pages, how-to's and other documentation for the automounter bear no relationship to the actual program that he used. It's like learning Unix from MS-DOS manuals).
Until he had to make a slight configuration change. The AppleTalk server wasn't returning the correct type or application for MP3s (I'll save the discussion of finding and uncompressing an MP3 player for the Mac for later). Okay, tweak a configuration file and restart the AppleTalk daemon.
Only it won't restart.
Nothing we do will restart it short of a reboot. So we reboot.
And reboot and reboot and reboot and reboot. Any change we make to the AppleTalk configuration file requires a reboot of Linux. Had Mark made the driver a module and unloaded it, then we wouldn't have to reboot. But having a modular kernel as a server is a potential security hole and Mark doesn't want that risk.
So it's reboot reboot reboot.
We then scour the net for updated anything.
It seems it's a known problem that you have to reboot if you change any configuration for AppleTalk.
Linux is Open Source, right?
Mark wants to reconfigure AppleTalk and not have to reboot. He's got this itch, right?
So, he hacks the kernel.
Thursday, February 24, 2000
Back from the Dead
So I finally got linus (my main computer) back in operational status after last week's little fit (starting with a dying and now dead mouse). Yea!Netscape, version Proxy Authorization Required
Since I installed a later version of RedHat (5.2) on linus that was on there before (5.0) I have a newer version of Netscape. Instead of version 4.04 (the NOTFOUND version) I now have 4.07 (the PROXYAUTHREQ version).Okay, so you have to be a webgeek to get the joke.
If Bill had a dollar for every blue screen …
If Bill [Gates] had one dollar for every blue screen … oh wait. He does.
Friday, February 25, 2000
Hack the Source, Part II
Mark has written some pages about hacking the Atalk driver in Linux. Another note not noted in the note: he reported that it doesn't work on another of his Linux systems—the major difference being a different network card. Is the Linux kernel that fragile that a difference in network causes a protocol stack to fail?DNS Woes
Mark wrote in today to say that reverse lookups for my domain weren't working properly. And lo, nslookup was having a hard time finding the machine it was running on.At first I thought maybe it was a problem with what I was trying to do with the latest version of bind. You see, I set things up such that I control the reverse lookup on the 32 IP addresses Atlantic Internet provides me.
This is done via an interesting hack. For the appropriate in-addr.arpa file, I have:
0 IN NS linus.slab.conman.org. 1 IN NS linus.slab.conman.org.
And so on for the 32 addresses I've been assigned. Then, for the namesever here in the Computer Room, I have:
1 IN PTR isdn.slab.conman.org. 2 IN PTR area51.slab.conman.org 3 IN PTR linus.slab.conman.org. 32 IN NS ns1a.aibusiness.net. 33 IN NS ns1a.aibusiness.net. 253 IN NS ns1a.aibusiness.net. 254 IN NS ns1a.aibusiness.net. 255 IN NS ns1a.aibusiness.net.
I've also set the nameserver to think it's a master for the in-addr.arpa zone I appear in.
So anyway, I thought the latest version of bind wasn't liking that. And it turned out that was true, to a degree.
There is no such TLD as .apra. Stupid typo.
Conman Laboratories monitors at Area 51
Not that I'm inviting anyone to try, but good luck trying to break into area51.slab.conman.org. You won't get very far nor is it a very interesting box. A Compaq 486DX/2 running at 66MHz with 20M of RAM and no harddrive.Yet it is on the network.
It's running a modifed Tom's Rootboot disk distribution with some network monitoring software I wrote. I just thought the name was cute.
Saturday, February 26, 2000
Tumblers tumbling
I'm updating my code on tumblers. Tumblers is a crucial portion of Xanadu, the hypertext system designed by Ted Nelson and still being worked on (only 40 years later).My tumblers work differently than the Xanalogical mode. There they are true numbers on which certain operations like addition and subtraction can be applied to address nodes (and all the nodes contained therein) whereas mine are not numerical at at and the operations that are performed on them do not have mathematical relationships. At least not in the Xanalogical sense.
Both systems (mine and Ted's) do allow ranges to be specified, but the mechanics differ. I'm not going to go into how Xanalogical tumblers work since that's described elsewhere. But I am going to describe what I'm working on.
Basically, my tumblers (for lack of a better term, that's why I'm using it currently) is just a list of node identifiers, with those listed first higher up than those below it, much like USENET groups. You have comp that contain all the computer related discussion groups, and below that you have comp.lang, which contain all the articles pertaining to computer languages to finally having comp.lang.forth, dealing with a particular computer language. And you are not limited to just the period for separating nodes—I also use slash and colon (for several reasons I won't get into right now).
But another aspect is describing ranges. A range specifier consists of left and right sides separated by a dash. The left side specifies the starting node, while the right side specifies the ending node, relative to the starting node. So that:
A.b.1-3
would specify the nodes A.b.1, A.b.2 and A.b.3. Notice that there are three node segments on the left side and only one on the right. That's important. The missing segments on the right side are inherited from the left. This inheritance only takes place if the right side has fewer segments than the left side. If the right side is longer than the left, it is assumed that the right side is a full specifier, like the left side is.
And so far, the code I have in mod_litbook handles those cases (dealing with the King James Bible for now). What it doesn't handle are separate but related ranges.
For instance,
A.b.1,5
The interpretation I use would return nodes A.b.1 and A.b.5 but nothing else in between. In this case, the comma is used to specify to independant nodes, but with the same relationship rules used in r