flog

Why are you playing this song?

Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features hard rock roots, mild rhythmic syncopation, extensive vamping, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation and minor key tonality.

Ev'rybody knows
you're insane, little sister,
tangled up in plaid.

I finally got my mouse working on Ubuntu. I have a two-button Logitech serial mouse attached to the on-board serial port 1, listening on COM4 (yes, I know, old skool, but I'm cheap and it still works perfectly). For whatever reason the install routines did not properly detect the mouse. Here's what I had to do to get it working.

• At the Gnome welcome screen, alt-s to bring up the session dialog.
• Choose whatever terminal option is there, and alt-o for OK.
• Enter username/password.
• vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
• Look for the "Section InputDevice" that sets up the mouse.
• Change Option Device from "/dev/input/mouse" to "/dev/ttyS0" (that is tty+capital S+number zero).
• Change Option Protocol from "IMPS/2" to "Auto".
• There were 2 other options in the mouse section, but I left them as they were.
• Hit ESC to get back into command-mode.
• type ":wq" no quotes, to quit VI, writing changes.
• At the terminal type halt to restart the machine. (You could probably just tell X to restart itself, but I'm a Windows luser, so I'm used to rebooting my machine when I change 2 lines in a config file

I found help on Ubuntu forums that referenced editing /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 however, that file no longer exists on the latest Ubuntu release. The corresponding file is the one listed above.

The help I found also suggested that the number after the ttyS is equal to n-1 where n is the COM port the mouse is on. However, in my case, n is equal to the ordinal number of the onboard serial ports (so, serial port 1 is ttyS0 and port 2 is ttyS1, regardless of COM ports).

It had never occurred to me that it could be time to re-think it, but Das Sitzpinkel-Manifest suggests I stop standing up to piss. I haven't discovered why yet.

I did find a blog comment that linked female hover pissing with the tragedy of the commons by way of Das Sizpinkel-Manifest.

This DRM defeat is only slightly more technically involved than the black marker crack.

I wouldn't really consider myself a fan of "pop", but this Franz Ferdinand really sticks with you. I was singing the refrain for "Darts of Pleasure" all the way to work this morning. Of course, that's probably partially because I have no radio in the Rabbit.

I've read the top 3 geek novels...all multiple times. As well as 7 and 13. I'd have to agree with /. that 9 should really be "Small Gods", which I have read. So, what is that? A geek novel score of 6?

Or maybe it should be a weighted rating so that having read number 1 on the list is worth more than having read number 20?

Yes, more links. Don't mess with Texas's PCs. The president of the RIAA doesn't think Sony/BMG has acted quit magnanimously. And let's boohoo now that Sony has set back CD protection by years.

You've got to love those Pseudomonas. One species (P. fluorescens) makes your pork chops glow and another species (P. aeruginosa) has evolved the ability to metabolize nylon.

Those Access reports; they run 5-7 times faster now that I have the additional RAM. I am also able to use other applications at the same time that the reports are running. Two things I was unable to do on Friday when I had half the RAM my machine has today. Suck it, Lou.

Ich heiße Superfantastisch.

I'm beginning to think that it is company policy that the grunts for PC Technical Services where I work at Initrode must be pricks. Twice in the past year I've had people come to my office to do something to my machine and both times I had the technician explain to me how what I needed done was a waste of time.

By the time the tech is at my office, the die has been cast, and sadly the powers that be have not consulted the tech about the best way to solve the problem. Believe it or not, the corporate help desk is more interested in satisfying users' requests than assuaging the little ego of some grunt that couldn't cut it at a decent company and so is working at Initrode.

About 4 months ago, someone in the Computer Support Services department must have had a few 100,000 dollars that needed to be spent quickly. So, a memo was sent out: "All PCs in the company will be upgraded from CRTs to LCD flat screen monitors." Of course, the company bought the cheapest, shittiest LCDs they could find and when I got mine the image was so fuzzy that I literally had trouble focusing my eyes when working in VB code windows. After 2 days of fighting it I call the Helpdesk.
"May I please have my CRT back?"
"Why do you want it back?"
"Well, in order to get rid of the eye-destroying fuzziness on these POS LCDs I have to jack up the resolution to 1280x1152. Of course, then everything is so small that I get headaches from trying to read it."
"Oh, well we don't have your monitor anymore. We'll have to bring you one of the ones left over from the lab."

Of course, they bring me an old 19in monitor, the color of which is already starting to fade to purple. The Novell logon prompt is also burned into the center of the screen. And the tech, who should just unhook the LCD and plug in the CRT for me and then leave promptly, decides he needs to find out why I don't want the LCD and try to see if he can "fix it"...as if I were too retarded to figure out the hardware doesn't work for me. He does eventually leave me with the barely usable monitor. Fortunately, there were 2 machines in the lab down the hall with 17in monitors. So, I swapped the 19in for one of the 17in monitors in the lab that was similar to my old one. Problem solved, no thanks to PCTECH.

Anyway, today, I requested to have more RAM put into my machine so I could run some reports I have to generate about once a week in less than 30 minutes or at least not have my machine turn into a single-tasking dumb terminal while the reports run.

I asked for more RAM because I knew there was no fucking way that my company would lay out the $1500 or so to get me an up to date Dell with something other than a Celeron in it. So, the request for RAM was already a concession on my part to practicality over the pursuit of the best solution to the problem. Well, Lou showed up today to install the larger capacity RAM modules and the second thing out of his mouth is some vague statement to the effect that "studies have shown adding RAM doesn't work to increase speed" and how "people don't want to troubleshoot the problem, but just throw RAM at it". This, coming from someone who is baffled as to how to logon to Windows XP because I changed the Netware client's welcome bitmap from the standard Initrode one to one of my own.

What the fuck?

Personally, I'm still having fun watching the Sony RootKit debacle unfold. So, I think that calls for a couple more links on the topic.

Here's an English translation of the Webwereld article from last week. Someone ran STRINGS on some of the binaries on one of the Sony RootKitted CDs and found identifying information that suggested the RootKit may, in fact, contain portions of LAME, meaning Sony is violating the LGPL each time they distribute one of their "enhanced" CDs.

Leave it to /. geek, muzzy, to take it one step further and do some research about Sony's XCP DRM system.

And since there's been so much activity on this topic in recent days. How about a timeline of the events from BoingBoing?

Pretty pictures of the geographic distribution of the Sony RootKit infection.

http://www.apocalyptic-theories.com/society/christianity/christ4.html
It's no secret that I do not hold a favorable view of Christianity, however, despite that, it doesn't seem to me that the ealdormonn's conclusion really follows from everything he had been saying up to that point.

Old Dominion Brewery has released an unknown quantity of their Dominion Millenium barleywine ale that has been aged for 6 months in oak barrels previously used to age bourbon. George at the Mini-Mart graciously gave me a bottle to try out.

• Poured amber to copper colored with a thick (3-4 fingers) off-white colored head. The head did not linger too long, but was thick and billowy while it lasted.
• Initial aroma was strongly vanilla with alcohol hints (reminded me of vanilla flavored vodkas I've had in the past).
• Finish is bitterness from hops and most noticably from the oak.
• On second taste, I caught a hint of hop aroma (don't know what variety) before the vanilla took over again.
• Mouthfeel was light for a barleywine - almost felt like a pale ale and was slightly oily (like strong liquor can be sometimes). Despite the obvious presence of the alcohol (in flavor, aroma, and "gut feel"), the beer is incredibly smooth and balanced.
• Overall impression is definitely vanilla aroma with a light oaky bitterness and definite alcohol warmth. I'm not a fan of barleywines, but this beer is enjoyable and not overwhelming or harsh at all. One 12 oz bottle is definitely enough to fully enjoy what it has to offer.

Technical specs:

• Bottled 2005-NOV-05 by Old Dominion Brewery.
• 11.4% abv
• Serving size 12 oz. poured from brown bottle (sadly with a twist-off cap).
• Served in 22 oz wide-mouthed "pint glass".

It took a little fucking around to get right, but I got Microsoft Access Conditional Formatting to format the contents of one Textbox based on how the value in a Label compares to a different value in a Textbox.

    Expression Is: CDate([DateFlag].[Caption])<[ChangeDate]

  

One quirky thing to notice is that you have to reference the Caption property of the Label, but just reference the Textbox itself.

Man, this just keeps getting better. Sony and/or First4Internet may have violated the GPL.

My cynical comments about Sony weathering this unscathed may have been premature. We'll see.

Some more fun with Sony's RootKit.

• First4Internet responds to M. Russinovich and he further highlights their ignorance.
• M. Russinovich finally hears from Sony about how to uninstall their RootKit.
• The first known trojan to exploit Sony's rootkit is discovered a mere 10 days after the news breaks on the SysInternals blog.
• The state of Caulifornia files a class action lawsuit against Sony as a result of its DRM rootkit.

Oh, yeah, and Sony is evil!

Varying the answer I give to question #3 of the Gene Guess test varies whether the it guesses that I am male or female. Clicking on either one of the right 2 circles (the ones adjacent to the man wearing the towel) results in the machine guessing I'm male. Clicking on either one of the left 2 circles (the ones adjacent to the women in the low-cut dress) results in the machine guessing I'm female.

I attribute the test's prior failure at guessing my sex to how poorly worded the question text is for item #3. It states "You are answering question three of geneguess.com and soon you will have the answer. Look at the black balls below which have very subtle differences. Click on th ball which appeals to you most. Don't click on th images!"

The question makes absolutely no sense. What criterion am I supposed to use to gauge "black ball appeal". There are four slightly ovoid circles, none of which I am particularly interested in. My first time through I just chose the most ovoid one and the second time through I chose the least ovoid one. Neither of those answers apply to the question though because a) it's nonsense to begin with and b) I am utterly indifferent towards the balls. So, who knows. Incidentally, if you do click on one of the pictures, you are taken to the same page, except that now the pictures of the man and woman are not hyperlinks anymore and regardless of which black ball I choose, the test guesses I'm female (presumably because woman are the only ones who would fail to follow explicitly worded instructions).

It seems to be largely horseshit, as far as I can tell from my limited testing.

What, if anything, should I make of the fact that GeneGuess.com guessed my sex wrong.

It'd be interesting to know what algorithm it is using.

Dossier, just sounds so 1980s/Cold War/cloak and dagger doesn't it?

It is attitudes as expressed in Jake Z's Amazon review that will allow Sony to weather this storm largely unscathed.

Further details on Sony/BMG's rootkit from SysInternals's Mark Russinovich. He even got someone who supports Sony's XCP software to post a comment.

Ask yourself, "do I have one of these trojan CDs?".

Maybe it's a sign that I still don't really understand the process, but I get a palpable thrill from running this:
xterm -e ./bbs.exe &
in a terminal window on my work machine, executing code stored on another machine 34 miles away and having the UI show up right in front of me on the screen attached to my work machine. (It's seems worth noting that ./bbs.exe telnets to a computer in Iowa.)

Windows 95 and MacOS are products, contrived by engineers in the service of specific companies. Unix, by contrast, is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic.

...or how I laugh my ass off at the misfortune of others.

http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.com/2005/11/hummer-overfloweth.html

If I had to guess (assuming it is all auf Deutsch) I'd say:
verdammte, verdammte, scheiße, fick
Which would be "damn it, damn it, shit, fuck".

Some of my favorites:

• Fick dich doch ins Knie. - "Go fuck yourself" (lit., Fuck yourself <emphatic marker> in the knee.)
• Du bist mir Scheissegal. - I don't give a shit about you (lit., You are to me equal to shit.)

IBM continues to be a pioneer.

I'd rather be happy than right any day. And are you? No. That's where it all falls down, of course.

Myself, I'm not sure if I'd rather be happy than right...especially if I knew I wasn't right.

Not Found



The requested URL /~beowulf/cgi-bin/bloxsom.cgi was not found on this server.

Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/2.0.50 (Mandrakelinux/7.3.101mdk) mod_ssl/2.0.50 OpenSSL/0.9.7d PHP/4.3.8 Server at www.hecat.org Port 80

  

Bloody fucking shit. I'm going to bed...

This shouldn't be so sodding hard to get working. Why would squid be able to find http://initrodeInfo.initrode.com and serve it to Firefox through the tunnel, but not find http://timesheet.initrode.com or http://initrodeinfo/.

If I type in http://timesheet or http://timesheet.initrode.com or http://10.x.y.z/ it always returns the same "Server Failure" (HTTP error 503 in access.log). The infurating thing is that the error message that squid serves to FF through the tunnel takes whichever of the three addresses I enter and returns http://timesheet/welcome.csv

I can load both http://initrodeinfo/ and http://timesheet/ in Lynx, but neither website is even approximately lynx-friendly.

Whose rights is this protecting?