November 24, 2004

Who Profits from Security Holes?

Who Profits from Security Holes?: "How bad is this problem? How much junk can get installed on a user's PC by merely visiting a single site? I set out to see for myself -- by visiting a single web page taking advantage of a security hole (in an ordinary fresh copy of Windows XP), and by recording what programs that site caused to be installed on my PC. In the course of my testing, my test PC was brought to a virtual stand-still -- with at least 16 distinct programs installed."

Yahoo! News - Tom Toles

November 15, 2004

November 02, 2004

Welcome to Gentoo is Rice, the Volume goes to 11 here.

Welcome to Gentoo is Rice, the Volume goes to 11 here.: "Welcome, this page is dedicated to the Linux Community's greatest ambassadors, Gentoo users. Like the annoying teenager next door with a 90hp import sporting a 6 foot tall bolt-on wing, Gentoo users are proof that society is best served by roving gangs of armed vigilantes, dishing out swift, cold justice with baseball bats to those fucking ricer bastards."

EMBL About Us - News and Communication - Press - Press Release 28 October 2004 - Darwin's greatest challenge tackled: the mystery of eye evolution

EMBL About Us - News and Communication - Press - Press Release 28 October 2004 - Darwin's greatest challenge tackled: the mystery of eye evolution

October 15, 2004

USATODAY.com - Endangered species: US programmers

USATODAY.com Miano sees such a dim future for programmers that he decided to enter law school. 'I saw the handwriting on the wall"

Yahoo! News - Lifestyle Photos - AFP

October 06, 2004

September 27, 2004

AustinGurl Journal

Some girl blogging her way through Europe. Lots of pictures. AustinGurl Journal

September 15, 2004

Slashdot | Wind Power Falls Under $0.01/kwh

Slashdot | Wind Power Falls Under $0.01/kwh: "all. If you have a use for the heat you can make the process of combustion highly efficient. For example, you could use the heat to distill water or something. Thermoelectric generation of electricity is even less cost-effective than fuel cells from what I can tell so that wouldn't be much help. "

Tomcat Security Overview and Analysis

Tomcat Security Overview and Analysis

Yahoo! News - Report: High-Tech Job Market Still Bleak

Yahoo! News - Report: High-Tech Job Market Still Bleak

September 09, 2004

Little Dell Fishing Tips

http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=139843 http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=139940 http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=148866 http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=154092 http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=155139

Yahoo! News - Tom Toles

September 07, 2004

VideoHelp.com Forum Archive - Quick DVD Backup Using a Dazzle DVC 150

VideoHelp.com Forum Archive - Quick DVD Backup Using a Dazzle DVC 150: "appeared useless and I was getting nowhere. Every disk I produced looked terrible and took for ever to produce, if they produced at all. I should point out that I am not copying DVDs. I am transferring the video from Laser Discs and from VHS tapes. However, I have had one big hangup with this method. The Elecard File Source simply does not work for me. The end result is always only the information from the first file in the list. Has anyone experienced this?"

September 03, 2004

7-in-1 card reade in fedora

FedoraNEWS.ORG: "2004-02-15 Fedora Tips 44: Here's how to get a 8in1 USB card reader to work with Fedora Core 1 - one that uses multiple LUNs for the different media: 1. Add 'max_scsi_luns=6' to the kernel paramaters in /etc/grub.conf 2. Add 'options scsi_mod max_scsi_luns=6' to /etc/modules.conf Reboot so the new kernel options take effect. When you plug in the USB card reader, you can use the right mouse button on the root window to get a popup menu with a submenu 'drives' that contains entries like 'memstick', 'memstick1', 'memstick2', etc. After you picked one of them, it will be mounted and a new icon appears on your desktop. - submitted by Sven Neuhaus"

DB on GPUs

DB on GPUs

Yahoo! News - World Photos - AP

Google Code Jam 2004, Powered by TopCoder

Cold Fusion Lives!

News & Analysis

DustPile3M

Free To Air sat stuff @ DustPile3M

Fry's = Outpost?

I didn't know that Fry's was outpost.com

August 27, 2004

Hamster-Powered Night Light

Hamster-Powered Night Light: "Tracking watt-hours per hamster-mile"

August 26, 2004

Build Monitoring w/ Lava Lamps

This guy uses lava lamps to monitor build status.  Interesting that his project is called 'dms'.
 
 
 

August 25, 2004

Unreadable Java

Who says Java code is easy to read: public FileTableModel(File dir) { this.dir = dir; java.util.List fnames=new ArrayList(Arrays.asList(dir.list(new FilenameFilter(){ public boolean accept(File file, String s) { return new File(file.getPath()+"/"+s).isDirectory(); } }))); for(Iterator it=(Arrays.asList(dir.list(new FilenameFilter(){ public boolean accept(File file, String s) { return new File(file.getPath()+"/"+s).isFile(); } }))).iterator(); it.hasNext();){ fnames.add(it.next()); } filenames=(String[])fnames.toArray(filenames); }

August 18, 2004

64 Bit Processors

Here's an overview on 64 bit processors (various sources), more questions than answers: 

 

Intel's EM64T is Intel's true x86_64 initiative. This 3.6GHz Xeon processor is actually the exact same CPU in as the LGA775 Pentium 4F we will see in just a few weeks.

 

AMD's Opteron 150 is the highest performing AMD workstation CPU money can buy. Thus, it is priced around $600 now.  (The nearly identical FX-53 is priced slightly higher). Intel's Xeon 3.6GHz / Pentium 4 3.6F processor is the highest performing Intel workstation CPU money can't buy; although it has shown up in various OEM channels, it really has not hit the market in full force yet.  When it does, we are expected to see it retail for $850.

 

FWIW, I think the Intel version offers hyperthreading, where the AMD chip does not.

 

Some Benchmarks:

Opteron 150 vs. Xeon 3.6 Nocona: http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2163&p=1

Athlon 64 vs. Xenon 3.6 Nocona: http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2158

 

Processor Cheat Sheet:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2118

 

The Dell Precision 670 is available with the aforementioned Nocona: http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/precn_670?c=us&cs=&l=en&s=bsd&

 

 

Background:

The AMD64 architecture extends the 32-bit x86 architecture (IA-32) by adding 64-bit registers, with full 32-bit and 16-bit compatibility modes for earlier software. Even the 64-bit mode is largely backward-compatible, allowing existing tools targeting x86 (eg. compilers) to be retargeted to AMD64 with minimal effort.  This is in sharp distinction to Intel's competing IA-64 architecture, which makes a complete break from Intel's own x86 architecture.  AMD has released its first generation of AMD64 processors, under the names Athlon 64 and Opteron. The Athlon 64 (codenamed "ClawHammer") is designed for desktop and mobile computers, while the Opteron (codenamed "SledgeHammer") is intended for servers and workstations.

 

IA-64 (Intel Architecture-64) is a 64-bit CPU architecture developed by Intel and Hewlett-Packard for processors such as Itanium. Unlike previous Intel x86 processors, the Itanium is not geared toward high performance execution of the IA-32 (x86) instruction set.  Itanium can switch into 32-bit mode with special jump escape instructions. The IA-32 instructions have been mapped to the Itanium's functional units. However, since the Itanium is built primarily for speed of its EPIC-style instructions, and because it has no out-of-order execution capabilities, IA-32 code executes at a severe performance penalty compared to either the IA-64 mode, or its Pentium line of processors.  

 

Extended Memory 64-bit Technology (EM64T) is an implementation of the AMD64 architecture, an extension to the IA-32 instruction set developed by AMD which adds 64 bit extentions to the x86 architecture.  Intel's first processor to implement the EM64T technology is expected to be a processor codenamed Nocona. The Nocona will eventually become a dual-processor version of the Intel Xeon.  This technology is not compatible with Intel's earlier 64-bit CPU technology, the Itanium processor based on IA-64 technology. It cannot run the same software written for IA-64. EM64T is an extension of the 32-bit x86 or IA-32 instruction set, while IA-64 is a complete rethink from scratch. One of the biggest complaints about IA-64 was that it was not able to run the existing IA-32 software fast enough, since it emulated the older IA-32 instructions rather than directly interpretting them. EM64T shouldn't have such a problem because IA-32 would just be a subset of its own native machine language.

 

Intel tried to keep the existence of EM64T secret for a long time for two reasons. First reason was that it did not want to give its customers mixed signals about the future viability of its Itanium IA-64 processors. However, the success of AMD's Opteron and Athlon 64 processors, based on its AMD64 technology, pretty much meant that Intel had to respond to the competitive threat. Which brings us to the second reason for Intel's secrecy, Intel didn't want to admit that it had to copy from its arch-rival AMD. That's why it gave it the brand name EM64T rather than AMD64, even though they are near identical twins.

 

 

JDK1.4.2 Is available for IA64

JDK1.5beta2 is available for AMD64 (So probably also runs on EM64T)

 

 

August 12, 2004

VMWare under 2.6/Fedora

I think there's another post on this somewhere, but I can't find it right now, so here

The Surging Evolution of
E-Discovery

The Surging Evolution of
E-Discovery

August 10, 2004

The Truth Is Still Out There

If the mass of the entire Earth were compressed into a black hole, it would be a little ball only a third of an inch in radius. Fortunately, the Earth is in no imminent danger of collapse because of the electrostatic repulsion of its constituent atoms. The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: The Truth Is Still Out There

StrangeBanana: Computer-generated webpage design

StrangeBanana: Computer-generated webpage design

Yahoo! News - Sports Photos - AP

July 27, 2004

July 19, 2004

Sebadoh!

I don't know how I missed this, but they're back together; well, Lou and Jason anyway. Salt Lake show is Aug. 16 Interview

Freeks & Geeks

on retroweb

July 16, 2004

A Voice for Working Stiffs

In the St. Petersburg Times and the Salt Lake Tribune: "The leaders of the backlash may talk Christ, but they walk corporate," Frank writes. "Values may 'matter most' to voters, but they always take a back seat to the needs of money once the elections are won."

"Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital-gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation."

June 30, 2004

June 25, 2004

June 16, 2004

Joel has a good article on the demise of the win32 api

Here is proof that Win32 programming sucks the life out of developers.

June 14, 2004

JCA Links

http://jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewforum&f=136 http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/03/24/j2eeca.html https://www6.software.ibm.com/developerworks/education/j-jca/j-jca-ltr.pdf OR https://www6.software.ibm.com/developerworks/education/j-jca/index.html?x=71&y=11 http://www.java201.com/resources/redirect/1625.html http://jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=19732 http://jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=46930

JBoss Performance Links

http://dev.simblogg.is/archives/cat_jboss.html http://jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewforum&f=121&topicDays=0&start=0 http://linuxintegrators.com/jbossBlog/bburke/?permalink=Optimizing+JBoss%3A+Experiences+with+SPECj2002.html http://www.javablogs.com/ViewEntry.jspa?id=88770 http://www.myj2ee.com/Members/Firedragon/jbosstuning

June 03, 2004

// Slashdot Your Printer

// Sends an rss feed to the lcd on your printer

package com.mike;

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

/**
 *
 */
public class PrinterNews {
    static String rss=/*"http://slashdot.org/index.rss";//*/"http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories";
    static String printer="";
    static int updateFrequency=30*1000*60;
    static int scrollDelay=300;//ms
    static String msg="";
    static String blank="                ";
    static OutputStream out;
    static ArrayList headlines;
    static boolean nice=true;//otherwise, it locks the printer

    public static void main(String[] args){
        try{
            if(!init(args))
                return;
            readHeadlines();
            connect();
            long startTime=new Date().getTime();
            while(true){
                scroll();
                if(new Date().getTime()-startTime>updateFrequency){
                    readHeadlines();
                    startTime=new Date().getTime();
                }
            }
        }catch(Exception e){
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public static boolean init(String[] args){
        if(args.length < 2){
            usage();
                return false;
        }
        for(int i=0; i<args.length; i=i+2){
            System.out.println("param "+i+" ="+args[i]);
            String parm=args[i];
            if(!parm.startsWith("-") || parm.length()!=2){
                usage();
                return false;
            }
            switch(parm.charAt(1)){
                case 'p':
                    printer=args[i+1];
                    System.out.println("set printer to "+printer);
                    break;
                case 'u':
                    rss=args[i+1];
                    System.out.println("set rss to "+rss);
                    break;
                case 'f':
                    try{
                        updateFrequency=Integer.parseInt(args[i+1])*1000*60;
                        System.out.println("set frequency to "+updateFrequency);
                    }catch(Exception e){
                        usage();
                        return false;
                    }
                case 'd':
                    try{
                        scrollDelay=Integer.parseInt(args[i+1]);
                        System.out.println("set delay to "+scrollDelay);
                        break;
                    }catch(Exception e){
                        usage();
                        return false;
                    }
                default:
                    usage();
                    return false;
            }
        }

        return true;
    }

    public static void usage(){
        System.out.println("\nUsage:\n");
        System.out.println("java com.mike.PrinterNews -p printer");
        System.out.println("                         [-u rss_url]             url of rss feed");
        System.out.println("                         [-f rssUpdateFrequency]  minutes between rss refresh");
        System.out.println("                         [-d scrollDelayMS]       ms between lcd update");
        System.out.println("defaults to -u http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories -f 30 -d 300");
        System.out.println("NOTE: slashdot will blacklist you for -f<30 !\n");
    }

    public static void connect() throws Exception{
        Socket s = new Socket(printer, 9100);
        out =s.getOutputStream();
    }

    public static void scroll() throws Exception{
        for(Iterator it=headlines.iterator(); it.hasNext();){
            sendMsg((String)(it.next()));
            if(nice){
                out.flush();
                out.close();
                Thread.sleep(1000);
                connect();
            }
        }
    }

    public static void sendMsg(String msg) throws Exception{
        msg=blank+msg+blank;
        //OPMSG, RDYMSG, STMSG
        for(int i=0; i<msg.length(); i++){
            byte[] b;
            if(msg.length()> i +15){
                b=msg.substring(i, i+15).getBytes();
            }else{
                b=msg.substring(i).getBytes();
            }
            out.write("\033%-12345X@PJL RDYMSG DISPLAY = \"".getBytes());
            out.write(b);
            out.write("\"\r\n\033%-12345X\r\n".getBytes());
            Thread.sleep(scrollDelay);
        }
    }

    public static void readHeadlines() throws Exception{
        headlines= new ArrayList();
        BufferedReader i = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new URL(rss).openStream()));
        while(true){
            String nextLine=i.readLine();
            if(nextLine==null)
                break;
            int start=nextLine.toLowerCase().indexOf("<description>");//<title>
            if(start!=-1)
                headlines.add(scrub(nextLine.substring(start+13, nextLine.indexOf("</")>start+13?nextLine.indexOf("</"):nextLine.length()))); //+7
        }
    }

    private static String scrub(String s) throws Exception{
        int start=s.indexOf("&");
        int end=s.indexOf(";",start>0?start:0);
        if(start!= -1 && end != -1)
            return scrub(s.substring(0, start) +s.substring(end+1));
        else
            return s;
    }
}

May 18, 2004

Some Fedora Issues: NVidia driver issues. dual boot issues.

This is a really good article about a guy studying virtual economies in muds

May 06, 2004

This is the first article in a series of 12 on the theory of classification. An excellent read for anyone interested in object oriented design.

April 15, 2004

I don't know why I couldn't find one out there, but anyway... pipe a find to it to operate over a directory structure: #!/bin/bash fname=start count=0 total=0 echo "getfile" while [ "$fname" != "" ] do read fname if [ -f $fname ] then count=`grep -v --count xyzzy $fname` echo "$fname = $count" let "total=total + count" fi done echo "total= $total"

March 23, 2004

IntelliJ gets hosed on Fedora, and other 2.6 kernels: If you add jar files to a project, they appear to imported correctly, but then aren't visible, and browsing through them in the package explorer shows unnamed classes. Workaround: Close IntelliJ Edit your idea.lax in the bin directory, find the lax.nl.java.option.additional property, and append -Didea.jars.nocopy=true to the end of arguement list. Then delete the contents of $intellij/system/jars and $intellij/system/caches Restart, and you may need to recreate your project.

March 19, 2004

This is a really cool post about 80's vinyl with computer games encoded.

March 01, 2004

Cheapest DVD rewinder

Every cell tower in america

NYTimes, February 27, 2004 For Exercise in New York Futility, Push Button By MICHAEL LUO or years, at thousands of New York City intersections, well-worn push buttons have offered harried walkers a rare promise of control over their pedestrian lives. The signs mounted above explained their purpose: To Cross Street Push Button Wait for Walk Signal Dept. of Transportation Millions of dutiful city residents and tourists have pushed them over the years, thinking it would help speed them in their journeys. Many trusting souls might have believed they actually worked. Others, more cynical, might have suspected they were broken but pushed anyway, out of habit, or in the off chance they might bring a walk sign more quickly. As it turns out, the cynics were right. The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on, according to city Department of Transportation officials. More than 2,500 of the 3,250 walk buttons that still exist function essentially as mechanical placebos, city figures show. Any benefit from them is only imagined. "I always push," said Réna, an employee at Long Island College Hospital in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, who was too embarrassed to give her last name after she pushed a button on Atlantic Avenue and was told the truth. "The sign says push, so I push. I think it works." Most of the buttons scattered through the city, mainly outside of Manhattan, are relics of the 1970's, before computers began tightly choreographing traffic signal patterns on major arteries. They were installed at a time when traffic was much lighter, said Michael Primeggia, deputy commissioner of traffic operations for the city's Transportation Department. The first "semi-actuated signal," as they are called by traffic engineers, is believed to have appeared in the city in 1964, a brainstorm of the legendary traffic commissioner, Henry Barnes, the inventor of the "Barnes Dance," the traffic system that stops all vehicles in the intersection and allows pedestrians to cross in every direction at the same time. Barnes was also instrumental in completing the one-way conversion of major avenues in New York. Typically, they were positioned at intersections of a major thoroughfare and a minor street. The major road would have a green light until someone pressed the button or a sensor in the roadway detected a car on the minor street. Then, after 90 seconds or so, the light would change. The goal, Mr. Primeggia said, was to make traffic flow on the major artery more efficient. The buttons made sense when traffic was generally minimal on the minor street. But as traffic grew steadily, their existence became imperiled. In 1975, about 750,000 cars entered Manhattan daily; this past holiday season, there were more than 1.1 million. The other boroughs have gone through similar growth, Mr. Primeggia said. As even minor streets became congested, the need for the semi-actuated signal largely disappeared, because they were constantly being tripped anyway by cars rolling up to the intersection. Many walk buttons also interfered with the computer-programmed coordination of lights that is now the rule in the city to facilitate traffic flow. By the late 1980's, most of the buttons had been deactivated, their steel exteriors masking the lie within. But city officials say they do not remember ever publishing an obituary, and the white and black signs stayed up, many of them looking as new and official as ever. "I don't always push, but I do it in the off-chance that I might save two seconds," said Joanne Downes, 63, a retired nursing professor, after pushing a broken button to cross the West Side Highway from Chelsea Piers on West 23rd Street yesterday morning. "I have guessed that they don't work, but why are they there?" There are 750 locations where the buttons actually do work, Mr. Primeggia said. Some of them have been installed more recently, while others are holdovers from two decades ago. The working buttons are only at intersections where the walk signal will never come unless the button is pushed or a car trips the sensor, Mr. Primeggia said. He cited two examples, one at Hicks and Summitt Streets in Brooklyn and the other on Flatbush Avenue just south of the Belt Parkway exit ramp. But other working push buttons are hard to find. A random survey of more than 30 intersections in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan found one, at Marathon Parkway and 51st Avenue in Little Neck, Queens, that worked. At $300 or $400 per intersection, it would cost about $1 million to remove the disconnected mechanisms, Mr. Primeggia said. About 500 have been removed during the course of major reconstruction projects. But city officials over the years decided it was not worth the cost for the rest, given other needs like rebuilding roads or installing new traffic signals. "We think of this from time to time," Mr. Primeggia said. "But there's always a better need for the money." And in the bigger scheme of things, he said, it doesn't really matter if people push a working button. "The public is going to get the walk signal regardless," he said. "I guess that's the point. There's no harm in having it at the locations." Many veteran New Yorkers have long learned to ignore them. They have never made sense, said Maryam Ceesay, 24, standing at a downtown Brooklyn push-button intersection. If pedestrians could simply push them and always get a walk signal, "cars would never cross," she said. "Traffic would stop." But Ms. Ceesay was at that moment baby-sitting 4-year-old Benjamin Miles. Despite his baby-sitter's explanations that the buttons "never work," Benjamin still pushed away at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Henry Street. Why? His explanation may be the best reason for the continued existence of the buttons. "Because," he said, "it's fun."

Utah actually got one right.

February 24, 2004

Very strange Volanomark results withHyperthreading under 2.6

February 20, 2004

February 12, 2004

Captive: The first free NTFS read/write filesystem for GNU/Linux

February 06, 2004

Low Power FM (LPFM) Channel Finder � � �(FCC) USA

Low power FM resources from Prometheus

I don't know how I've missed Rudy Ray Moore's Dolemite website.

February 05, 2004

Anyone who doesn't stand to profit from RFID tags think they're scarry.

February 04, 2004

Who tracks your personal info, and what is it worth

Knowledge@Wharton has some interesting business wank articles.

January 30, 2004

Good wired article on U.S. tech jobs moving to India. "But isn't part of this country's vitality its ability to make these kinds of changes?" I counter. "We've done it before - going from farm to factory, from factory to knowledge work, and from knowledge work to whatever's next." She looks at me. Then she says, "I'd like to know where you go from knowledge."

Daily political cartoons

History of the DeCSS Haiku

Darpa new project solicitations. Your tax dollars at work.

MSNBC's First Read is a good daily political blog.

Penguine baseball here and here

blogBuddy is handy for offline posting