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God knows, it's time somebody based their company logo on this special lady.

NannyMUD is one of the first LPMUDs put together, and has a very large player base and world. It's been around since 1990, and has a nice wide range of guilds and quests and realms to explore.

I haven't really played since 1999, but I still know people who do, and enjoy it to this day.

A better solution is to upgrade to Software Libre's offering of lsh -- a more secure, more Free as in Freedom implementation of the SSH protocol.

You can easily find information on how to avoid buffer overflows, such as in this article.

However, the developers in the lsh project (for example) do not appear to have given this subject much thought. In the lsh manual, the chapter on Threats silently assumes the software works as designed. It does not mention protection against exploits such as buffer overflows.

And the coding standards outlined in the lsh hacking guide are targeted at avoiding breakage by the programmers, not by outside attackers.

Projects developing exploit-sensitive software should implement proper measures to avoid buffer overflows. As long as this is done, C may still be the appropriate language for such projects.

You can easily find information on how to avoid buffer overflows, such as in this article.

However, the developers in the lsh project (for example) do not appear to have given this subject much thought. In the lsh manual, the chapter on Threats silently assumes the software works as designed. It does not mention protection against exploits such as buffer overflows.

And the coding standards outlined in the lsh hacking guide are targeted at avoiding breakage by the programmers, not by outside attackers.

Projects developing exploit-sensitive software should implement proper measures to avoid buffer overflows. As long as this is done, C may still be the appropriate language for such projects.

you decide

Check this out!

POSTED AGAIN DUE TO BROKEN LINK

Important Stuff:
Please try to keep posts on topic.

Sendmail 8.12.9 prescan bug

attack details:

Local exploitation on little endian Linux is confirmed to be trivial
via recipient.c and sendtolist(), with a pointer overwrite leading to a
neat case of free() on user-supplied data, i.e.:

eip = 0x40178ae2
edx = 0x41414141
esi = 0x61616161

SEGV in chunk_free (ar_ptr=0x4022a160, p=0x81337e0) at malloc.c:3242

0x40178ae2 : mov %esi,0xc(%edx)
0x40178ae5 : mov %edx,0x8(%esi)

Remote attack is believed to be possible.
It also seems that a CS student from the university of Sweden has posted a working exploit on this web site. Scary stuff. So patch your system, people!

Click here for sendmail 8.12.10 release notes

Also, a swedish CS student has posted an exploit on his web site. (With some code deliberately hobbled to prevent skript kiddies from abusing it)

Almost as big as this!

This isn't exactly new. A swedish law professor has done a nice write-up on viral marketing, its future and several cases of it during the past decade.

Check out Jim Grey's info page on Microsoft Research He's done research on many diverse and interesting technologies such as distributed computing and sequential I/O performance. There are some nifty sites he has taken part in creating, such as a browsable photo of Earth, and a map of the Universe

Simputer Linux handheld for developing world finds builder

And here is a photo example of the Simputer (running a Linux-based operating system no less!)

Actually, there's a project going on at the university of Sweden on getting linux to run on a Simputer. Here's a screenshot showing tiny linux running on one.

Rs 12000

Rs 12000

Yeah... I thought the CS community at large mostly knew about this. Okay:

Fortran specifies that Thou Shalt Not Alias, so in the example on the page that you linked to, the function-calling programmer, the function-implementing programmer, and the compiler can all assume that everything refers to non-overlapping memory, and can optimize the hell out of read/write memory accesses.

When Dennis Ritchie designed C, it was a deliberate decision to not prohibit aliasing. (C's ancestor languages may have allowed aliasing as well, and DMR just decided to continue that; I don't actually know. But the question was brought up and considered; it's not an accident.)

When C was first being standardized by ANSI, a really sloppy proposal was made to add a 'noalias' keyword. It was so bad that DMR sent a public letter to the ANSI committee stating, "noalias must go; this is non-negotiable." So C89 has no way of restricting aliasing.

C++98 and C99 do, sort of. C99 added the __restrict keyword to the language. C++98 left the core language alone and defined a library type, std::valarray, that is free of aliasing by definition, opening up a number of optimization possibilities.

Valarray didn't quite work out; its design is semi-broken. Far more hopeful is using expression templates to expose more of the numerical computations to the compiler, so that more optimizations can be done on visible numbers. Check out Blitz++ at oonumerics.org for an example.

This is the README from 1998

Thanks andreas. I didn't notice the date - it is an old README.

I found it here, in the same directory as the current version of lsh, and assumed it was still valid. I'm sure I won't be the only one. Someone affiliated with lsh needs to remove it - or better, replace it with a current readme.

So the existence of an old README on the FTP server might be an oversight, but is no indication of missing or wrong documentation.

And I find the performance of OpenSSH much more worrysome.

Personally, I have upgraded all my systems to lsh. The code looks much more trustworthy, and I'm sick of upgrading every few months.

There's a D? What's next? Eb? Technology is moving at an incredible rate, indeed!

My first mouse was in ~1985 and was OPTICAL!It was for my PCjr and came with ColorPaint, and connected to the computer via both the proprietary LightPen port and a serial port. This complemented the PCjr's WIRELESS keyboard, all to make a package well ahead of its time.

Here's a pic.

The PCjr was the first IBM to come with a 16-color display, which Sierra used in the King's Quest games and others, with 3 channel sound, and a noise generator that Sierra used for crashing waves and running streams and could be used to generate (very remedial) speech.

As with most of you, when you turned this computer on without any disk (or PCjr cartridge) it popped into basic. ~15 years later, and I'm a professional programmer :)

Yet more PC jr links.

Lastly, if you've ever played any of Sierra's Xxxxxx-Quest games (King's Quest, Space Quest, etc)., thank the PCjr. The first, King's Quest, was designed on request from the PCjr boys to show off the machine. :)

Please mod the parent down - it is wrong and therefore not informative.

Scandinavia is Denmark, Sweden and Norway and sometimes Iceland (the ancient lands of the Norsemen), while the Nordic countries are Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland.

See here for more info.

# Ms Office Standard (Win: 347 / Mac: 357)
# Photoshop (Win: 580 / Mac: 590)
# Illustrator (Win: 390 / Mac: 403)
# Premiere 6.5 (Win: 540 / Mac: 533)
OpenOffice.org
The Gimp
Dia
Cinelerra

Sum: $0

Python, Perl and to a lesser extent Javascript aren't designed for this. (I say lesser extent Javascript, since there actually is a version of Javascript that compiles to the same format Applescript uses and works in the same way)

Javascript OSA

One must also point out that there are glue modules for Perl that allow it to do most Applescripting.

Applescript Module
Applescript Glue for Perl

I agree that in general one would be better off using an other scripting language. But Applescript is useful -- especially for small tasks. (I think the majority of my scripts are less than 25 lines long)

I've not tried using the more robust OSA features in Python. Ususally I just call applescripts. I plan on doing more of this during the upcoming weeks.

Python OSA Applescript

Unfortunately as I alluded in my other post, Applescript Studio doesn't really support OSA languages other than Applescript. (OSA is from a programmer's perspective something like the VM for Java - it lets you use other languages)

I 100% agree that having a good general scripting book for OSX would be a great idea. It would have to be very practical. Here's hoping.

Some people like his writing style but tutorial and reference books are not novels. It is unacceptable when they are full of mistakes especially when the author does not understand his own errors and appears authoritative to those that do not know an better yet and are just learning the ropes.

This is not a flame, it is important to warn everybody about some BAD C/C++ books out there. You can read more about the opinions of Schildt's books at the ACCU book reviews. The alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ FAQ has more info on why not to use his books. In particular The Annotated Annotated C Standard lists many of the problems in Schildt's The Annotated C Standard including errors in the transcription of the standard itself.

A company named Icom Simulations created adventure games with a genuine Mac GUI: Deja Vu, Uninvited and my all time favorite: Shadowgate. Would love to play those again.

Here's the Med Systems Software page. It's got a tiny blurb about the original TRS-80 version of Labyrinth, but nothing special. The trash 80 game was definitely hand assembly, there's simply no other way to push the graphics out fast enough with it's onboard BASIC interpreter. Fun games. :) Cheers. --M

• Save yourself the burden of typing LaTeX directly, and get a good front-end like LyX. Btw, it can also import existing (not-too-convoluted) LaTeX, just in case you already started writing. TeXmacs could be another option if your book is on a mathematical subject.
• For vectorial diagrams and images, get Sketch and Dia and forget everything else (except perhaps Xfig, which comes handy sometimes). Sketch does a decent job at importing simple PostScript by itself (so you can retouch it), and of course it exports PS and EPS. For importing complex PostScript you may also use it together with pstoedit, which supports the Sketch format natively.
• For graphs and trees have a look at Graphviz, which can generate beautiful outputs (both EPS or bitmapped) from simple textual descriptions of nodes and arcs (and it saves you

No, no jar jar binks. Jar Jar was obviously an amphibian of some sort. This is closer to what a rabbit/human hybrid would be ;3.

As with all Slashdot stories... once again, the Amiga had it first. (lower right)

But here is an artists sketch of what one of these Chimera twins might look like.

I don't actually use the Linux command line very much these days. If you use tools like webmin you never need to use the command line. The main difference between Linux tools and windows tools is that most Windows tools a native Applications/Dlls so you have to use remote desktop (I know there are command line versions that's not the way it is done) whereas most linux tools are commandline with multiple Guis.

cdrecord is a wonderful example. It used to be just a commandline program. Here are some of the interfaces for it that I know:
Webmin - remote backups.
Nautilus - like windows explorer.
Perl scrips - automated backups.

What seems to be happening if most linux appliactions have 3 interfaces:
*A Web interface
*A commandline interface
*An appliaction interface

Some more examples that I know of:
*Dia
*Graphviz

To be honest generally the command line version have aditional options that aren't in the appliaction version but most windows appliactions that I know of are the same they just use the registry instead (Look in the Windows Knowledge base).

To be honest I can't think of anything that can't be done through a gui know. I'd still recomend doing some of them through the command line incase there are errors but it's not required.

I found relatively little use for pointers. -- Brian Kernighan, 1981.

I've been using perl pretty much constantly since the Pink Camel, and believe me, Perl 5 is an extremely good language for quick scripting things. That's what it was designed for. Sure, you can do big projects in it, but it's not exactly ideal. Recently I've started using Ruby as well, and I intend to move my department over to it instead of wasting time with Perl 6.

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying.

I think you should reserve judgement until there is an implementation. Otherwise sweeping statements like 'perl6 won't make development any faster' are pretty hard to justify or to disprove.

By all means attack perl5, or dismiss perl6 as vapourware.

FWIW, the huge ugly monster that is Mozilla seems to have turned out rather well in the end - it just took far too long to get there. It's not perfect, but it has succeeded in its own aims (be a portable web browser suited for everyday use).

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying.

Here's an HTML version of Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language. There's a Postscript version on Kernighan's website

A classic

Hybrid solutions always the best

I think it was Rise of the Dragon

Restrict seems like a questionable attempt to graft bits of an effect system onto C's already tenuous type system. I'm not convinced that it's a great idea, but to tell you the truth, I haven't looked into it enough to be sure. Some people have, though.

But yeah, you're right: if it works it certainly is a significant development.

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. To put it bluntly, Perl scripts will still look less beautiful than our friend Mr Goatse. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^HPerl is dying. Larry is buggering it up the ass without lubricants, just like Shoeboy is doing to Larry's daughter.

only need a good visio-like tool to be complete.

Try Dia - It's GPL and I've found it to be excellent for UML/Database Schemas and a damn site more intuitive than Visio. It's sort of like Visio meets the Gimp in terms of UI.

You can read more about this principle, which is actually part of the constitution since hundreds of years ago in both Sweden and Finland, here.

Clicky Clicky.

Truly, things to program by (or not).

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying.

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. To put it bluntly, Perl scripts will still look less beautiful than our friend Mr Goatse. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD ^H^H^H^H Perl is dying. Larry is buggering it up the ass without lubricants, just like Shoeboy is doing to Larry's daughter.

The National Supercomputer Centre in Sweden use multiply Linux beowulf clusters as well as supercomputers like the SGI Origin 3800. The fastest Linux cluster places 51 among the 500 fastest computers in the world.Monolith consists of over 200 PC computers. Each computer has two Intel Xeon processors at 2.2 GHz, 2 GBytes primary memory (ECC DDR). They're all used for research and development.

The advanages of clusters is allot of power at low cost. How well they perform compared to ordinary supercomputers depends on the task.

The National Supercomputer Centre in Sweden use multiply Linux beowulf clusters as well as supercomputers like the SGI Origin 3800. The fastest Linux cluster places 51 among the 500 fastest computers in the world.Monolith consists of over 200 PC computers. Each computer has two Intel Xeon processors at 2.2 GHz, 2 GBytes primary memory (ECC DDR). They're all used for research and development.

The advanages of clusters is allot of power at low cost. How well they perform compared to ordinary supercomputers depends on the task.

This looks like a job for...
DIA!

If you are uber cool, you will use a text-editor like emacs or somesuch and just type the XML that describes all your elements, and then import, and wallah!

All you have to do is move the traces around if you don't like how it looks.

Personally I haven't done that but I've shot through one such document making local/global changes and it's veeeerrryy useful. Fuck Visio!