It seems that the leune.com domain became available. Yesterday, I registered that domain, in addition to leune.org. So, if you prefer blue over red, please go there.
Anyhow, I have not really planned much for the domain. Most likely, I'll separate personal information and professional information over the two sites. Not sure yet, we'll see.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Security Advisory DSA 832-1 security@debian.org http://www.debian.org/security/ Martin Schulze September 30th, 2005 http://www.debian.org/security/faq ---------------------------------------------------------------------------Package : gopher
Vulnerability : buffer overflows
Problem type : remote
Debian-specific: no
CVE ID : CAN-2005-2772Several buffer overflows have been discovered in gopher, a
text-oriented client for the Gopher Distributed Hypertext protocol,
that can be exploited by a malicious Gopher server.
This one made me feel old. Gopher?! Gopher was "hot" when I started as a student at Tilburg University! I cannot remember the last time I actually stumbled upon an old Gopher server. Man, that brings me back to the times of the demo groups competing to the the c00le5t group out there! Stuff like 64kmovie.exe and such....
I will be teaching a guest lecture on "Security" for the "Computer Infrastructures" course that is taught at our department. The request of the teacher is that it is "a little bit technical" and last anywhere between one and two hours. I am taking suggestions for a lecture outline :-)
Oh; a day later, I will also be presenting AIRT at a SURFnet seminar. If you're interested to attend, please sign up. Attendance is free, in both senses of the word.
I just stumbled over this tutorial, which discusses how to remove red-eye from photos with The Gimp. If you follow the tutorial, you'll be able to get rid of those red eyes in under two minutes!
I recently bought a video camera made by Sony. Of course, the drivers that came with it did not include Linux drivers, so I was kind of out of luck. Until a colleage pointed that that Sony's i.Link is really a standard implementation of Firewire (IEEE 1394).
Anyhow, after paying a shocking amount of money (€ 15.95) for a simple 4 pins to 4 pin Firewire cable, I was in business. Simply linking the cable to my PC and the camera, and typing 'apt-get install kino' brought in the Kino package, and its dependencies.
Kino is an all-round video editing package that allows capturing raw images via the Firewire port, Scene editing, special effects, DVD export, and much more.
The Dutch site www.waarschuwingsdienst.nl provides email and sms alerting services to citizens in the area of computer end-users. To explain the concept of "botnets", the made two excellent movies. View them here in Dutch or English.
Heather just mentioned that the Internet is shit. While I mostly agree with the sentiment, I had to think a few times about posting this blog entry. Does doing so not totally invalidate the spirit of that text? By saying that I agree, and subsequently posting it here, am I not being totally irrational, or at least am I lacking in consistency between saying, thinking and doing? Or, am I just grabbing the opportunity to be noticed, much like most of us do when we get a chance? Anyhow, www.theinternetisshit.org has the full text, but I'll cite it here anyway:
The internet is shit.
It is vitally important that we all realize this and move on. People (eg Bloggers) go on and on about how wonderful it is. About how much information is out there in cyberspace. About the way that everything is within reach in just a few clicks of their mice.
For instance:
"If I can operate Google, I can find anything... Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God. God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too." Alan Cohen, V.P. of Airespace, a new Wi-Fi provider, New York Times, 6/29/03
I can name 20 people from my old school class who aren't in Google. I can walk into any public library, no matter how tiny and underfunded, and find facts, stories, amazing information I would never touch in a month of webcrawling. I can go into a bar and hear stories Usenet hasn't come close to in its 22 years of waffle. "Oh but what about the stuff you CAN get on the web?" the netheads say. But they're missing the point.
The internet is not the sole basis upon which you can determine existence. It sounds simple but people are starting to forget. If it doesn't have a website, that doesn't make something low quality. If you can't Google your blind date, that doesn't make them a freak. If one website says something about anything, it's more than likely pure invention and shouldn't be taken seriously. Checking your sources does not mean finding another website that says the same. Fiction is self-perpetuating.
Let's say it another way. A URL is not a mark of quality. It's not proof of honesty or approval from the FDA. Sure, people say they know this already, that a lot of the internet isn't true and a lot of it isn't interesting, no matter how angst-ridden and attention-seeking its author. But still we praise the internet for everything, from mobilising global protests to creating the latest trends, while disappearing up its backside and discarding anything outside it as 'out of touch'.
While we ascribe every first-world miracle to the electronic age, there's something truly missing that we once had in our grasp: our sense of wonder. Back in 1995, we were surprised, agog when things appeared on the net. People starting going around saying 'wow, this could really become something'. Slowly (very slowly at 16kbps), strange websites, new information, odd diversions and discussions with people around the world appeared in this brave new world. Each time it was met with surprise and delight, even if some of it was deeply obscure and slightly dull. There was no doubting the potential of the medium.
And look what we've done with it. Food wrappers and soap operas now tell us to visit their websites. Money is pumped online by people who can't even spell HTML. All manner of pointless and irritating content is continually poured down the infinite hole of data, unfiltered and over-appreciated. In accepting freedom of speech, we can't hide from its consequences - which in this case is millions of terabytes of unreliable information, badly designed and clumsily written. We have failed our own creation and given birth something truly awful. We're just too busy cooing over the pram to notice.
We need to start again. We need to stop saying how wonderful things are. We need to openly, truthfully and respectfully admit that the internet itself, in almost all of what's been done with it, is shit.
There's no point in undoing what has been done. What we need to do is to change our attitude. The internet isn't new any more. The evangelists have done their job. Everyone's heard of it even if they don't spend their lives logged on. Now its the job of the congregation to revolt. Chant it from the rooftops, spread it across your server, email it to your friends. The internet is shit.
And then what? Then we can move on. If we truly understand that the internet is shit then maybe we'll go back to looking elsewhere to check our information instead of just Google. Maybe journalists will do proper research again. If we remember that the medium isn't the message then maybe we'll stop aimlessly surfing for something amusing when we could actually be doing something fun. And, crucially, if the internet is just seen as occasionally unavoidable, maybe those websites that give us something special will be all the more amazing for it.
Give an infinite number of monkeys typewriters and they'll produce the works of Shakespeare. Unfortunately, I feel like I'm reading all the books where they didn't. I can't wait for the day when the internet makes me rejoice in its possibilities again. But right now, it's shit.
Just to let everybody know that this blog is still alive and kicking. However, due to a fairly life-changing event, work being busy, and my in-laws staying at our house, blogging is sort of low on my list of priorities. I expect to be more active in a week or two.
Steve wrote: Yay! The Once a Year Repave. In his blog entry, he wonders why he has to "repave" his box at least once a year. I smiled when I read it, since I have not had to do that for years.
One of the most important reasons that I switched from Windows to Linux years ago was NOT the ideology of Free Software, or the availability of tools that fit my needs better. The most important reason was that a Unix system "feels" more stable.
After starting out on VAX/VMS, I went to DEC Ultrix, Sun Solaris, HP/UX and finally I ended up in Linux land. Via Slackware and RedHat, I settled down on Debian GNU/Linux. Why? Because of its extremely well-developed packaging system.
All files on my system can be traced back to a package which owns it. Having that knowledge at my disposal makes removing software, adding new programs, and upgrading existing software a breeze. Using the dependencies system, it also means that my system does not have library version conflicts and such.
It is exactly that kind of packaging that Windows currently lacks. I know that programs can often be installed and uninstalled, but I still regularly manage to hose Windows systems if I do so. I feel that this is mostly due to the fact that dependencies are NOT addressed adequately in Windows packages.
I have thought about creating user interfaces and pleasurable computing experiences often. Today, I hit a rock bottom low in those thoughts. For some reason, Windows XP decided that *it* was in charge of the computer, and not me. Let me clarify: when I hit the off button on my computer, I expect it to go off. If it needs to do a quick shutdown sequence to ensure data integrity, I can live with that although it is really a design flaw that it is necessary.
Today when I hit the "off" button on my laptop, it decided that it really did not need to shut down, but that it would be more than okay to tell me to NOT TOUCH THE OFF BUTTON and that Windows itself would decide when it is time to shut down. It then happily proceeded at its leasure to install a number of updates. 15 minutes later, a shutdown sequence started that itself took 10 minutes (?!) and THEN it decided that it was time to shut off my computer.
Now, like I said, a short delay is acceptable, but to make me wait 25 minutes????!!
Have you ever had it when you are so "in the zone" that you need to unwind for over an hour after stopping whatever it is that you were doing before you are good for anything else? And, when are you finally unwound, do you ever wonder how you got home in the first place?
I need to start watching myself better-- in the end, it can only lead to accidents and that's something that nobody wants.
We just picked up our baby stroller. Unlike the car seat (which is US made), this one is made right here in Tilburg, The Netherlands. The other day, I wrote a little bit about the warning labels on that car seat. This stroller has one: "Warning: You are responsible for the safety of your child". I cannot agree more. Do we really need anything else?
So, we just bought a new baby car seat and asked a friend of ours to bring it over to the Netherlands on a business trip from the United States. I know that American corporations have to be extremely careful with their products to prevent getting sued over silly things. Graco might have taken it to a next level though; check out these pictures!
How many tags can you fit? And note that this pictures are of just of the actual seat; there is also a complete base station....
