During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play "Fur Elise" or "It's a Small, Small World" seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer's BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have drifted out of tolerance. This is a design feature of a detection circuit and system BIOSes developed by Award/Unicore from 1997 on.
"Fur Elise" would be much more pleasant than an error message or a droning beep. "It's a Small, Small World" on the other hand is straight annoying.
A Visit to the Creation Museum, 11/10/07 - a photoset on Flickr
Topic: Society
10:47 am EST, Nov 16, 2007
A photo collection from some kid's visit to a creationism museum. The title's and commentary make it rather interesting.
Apparently God is an Average Student
Hey, it's not me. Look at this report card! It's all "Cs"! Sure, he could probably do better if he applied himself, but then why should he? When you're already omnipotent and all-knowing, you don't exactly have to make the extra effort, now, do you? That said, I'm personally holding out for an Eternal Plan that's all As. It's not too much to ask for some quality work from one's creator.
A Thorny Problem
Follow the "logic" here.
International Brotherhood of Ark Builders, Local 122 Takes its Contractually Provided 15-Minute Break
Yes, they know Noah's in a rush. But it's in the contract. Don't worry. God dealt with them. Yes, He was the world's first union-buster.
The Names of the Two Biggest Rock Bands in the Immediate Post-Flood Era
NIST has opened a public competition to develop a new cryptographic hash algorithm, which converts a variable length message into a short “message digest” that can be used for digital signatures, message authentication and other applications. The competition is NIST’s response to recent advances in the cryptanalysis of hash functions. The new hash algorithm will be called “SHA-3” and will augment the hash algorithms currently specified in FIPS 180-2, Secure Hash Standard. Entries for the competition must be received by October 31, 2008.
Spectator: Detection and Containment of JavaScript Worms
Topic: Miscellaneous
12:08 pm EDT, Oct 29, 2007
Recent popularity of interactive AJAX-based Web 2.0 applications has given rise to a new breed of security threats: JavaScript worms. We propose Spectator, the first automatic detection and containment solution for JavaScript worms. Spectator is a proxy that performs distributed data tainting by observing and tagging the traffic between the browser and the Web application. When a piece of data propagates "too far", a potential worm is reported. To prevent worm propagation, subsequent upload attempts performed by the same worm are blocked. Spectator is able to detect fast and slow moving, monomorphic and polymorphic worms with a low rate of false positives. In addition to our detection and containment solution, we propose a range of deployment models for Spectator, ranging from simple intranet-wide deployments to a scalable load-balancing scheme appropriate for large Web sites.
Ben Livshits, a researcher at MSFT is up to some pretty cool code analysis work.
This guy built a motion sensing water gun to scare off the rabbits intruding on his garden. His goals for the project were:
# Must have automatic fire ability # Must be able to detect motion # Must be able to record the event # Must be able to turn off auto fire mode and take on manual control # Must be able to "Water the Lawn" # Must be able to cover a 30 foot field of fire # Must have a range of about 25 to 35 feet # Must have the ability to work at night with all of the above features # Must be able to Play back any recordings and laugh while sitting on the deck drinking a beer.
For supplies he used: # X10 120 volt outlet # X10 Transmitter and Receiver # X10 Libraries that would work with C# # In ground sprinkler solenoid # Phidget single servo board with servo # Phidget C# libraries # PVC pipe, Copper Ice maker pipe, and a few other plumbing parts # Old computer, 1.7 GHz with a gig of ram # USB Web camera
He also used AForge.NET which is a C# framework designed for developers and researchers in the fields of Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence - image processing, neural networks, genetic algorithms, machine learning, etc. http://code.google.com/p/aforge
School: Did you really name your son Robert'); Drop Table Students;--? Mom: Oh. Yes. Little Bobby Tables we call him School: Well, we've lost this year's student records. I hope your happy. Mom: and I hope you've learned to sanitize your database inputs.
HAHAHA! Sweet.
To be fair, you shouldn't sanitize user input, you should validate it.
Too long have we suffered in silence under the tyranny of idiocy. In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point.
It's time to fight back.
The solution we're creating is simple: an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines. The primary challenge inherent in our task is that stupidity is not a binary distinction, but rather a matter of degree. To this end, we're collecting a ranked corpus of stupid text, gleaned from user comments on public websites and ranked on a five-point scale.
Eventually, once the research is completed, we plan to release core engine source code for incorporation into content management systems, blogs, wikis and the like. Additionally, we plan to develop a fully implemented Firefox plugin and a Wordpress plugin.
Last night I watched this very interesting documentary on William Gibson. (Available via Netflix for those of your w/ subscriptions)
The 90 minute film is an interview with Gibson while he is riding cross country in the back of a limo. Gibson provides profound commentary on the state of mankind and technology. It is also a bit an autobiography and Gibson gives insight into his influences and thought process.
Even if your not familiar with Gibson's work. He is an interesting and poetic person to listen to. Also, I didn't expect a road trip to be visually stimulating when the primary view is from inside the car, but the director made that happen.
In this youtube, Larry Lessig appears on Danish TV to explain his new cause, devoting the next ten years to ending government corruption. Lessig is downright inspirational on the subject, calling on us to set aside our cynical instinct that tells us that money will always control government and use technology to expose corruption and rally citizens to end it.
