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Fenris was a little puppy also, a cute little puppy that the gods in Valhalla took as their pet..

To describe Microsoft's upcoming kanine experience as "scary" and "unpleasant" is a gross understatement.

Frank Miller portrayed a Superman vs. Batman battle in The Dark Knight Returns (as well as DK2) - without a doubt one of the great graphic novels.

I hope Mr. Miller gets some credit/money out of this film.

Hmm, do you by any chance mean Uridium?

Coagula

It does exactly this, and it's excellent fun to play around with.

Anybody who wants to make their own funkiness on, say Windows, try Coagula.

This plugin works for xmms. Get the dspectogram 1.2.tar.gz - It looks really freaky as the two faces (L and R) channels appear....

Nah, he probably just fires up the old Tandy 1000 and pops in F-15 Strike Eagle.

Speaking of annoyances in Windows, how the heck do you set it so Internet Explorer always opens new windows maximized? The various browsers on Linux don't have any problems with this, but it's driving me crazy in every version of Windows I use.

There may be a better way to do this, but I'm not gonna waste my time figuring it out, I have work to do...

However, I too got sick of this about two or three days ago and installed a program to fix it. It's called 'IE New Window Maximizer.' It is free, of course. There are also programs out there to kill popups, which are equally annoying. I can't wait till advertisers start using CSS popups instead.. it will be harder to kill those without killing lots of other important things.

And for those comments on how XP is the same as Win2k, I guess you have never had a problem with installing old software on 2k. I ran into that problem all the time, but XP has better backwards compatibility. I'm running XP Pro. My only bitch is that you cannot upgrade from 98, you have to reinstall.

There are more fonts here, here, and here
There is also a Windows utility to aid in writing in Elvish: Tengwar Scribe.

Dreamhack 2001 - Nerds on a hunt for love

Funny comic-strip about Dreamhack 2001.

Ok, then maybe you should try this browser instead.

Yes, I saw the sarcasm there. But seriously, why shouldn't you be able to run a browser on a relatively "modern" computer?

Oh, you again. Shut the fuck up.

Pot?

• Free Windows version
  Sokoban (also this page has a lot of
  links to other versions and resources).
  
  
• A X11 version
  Xsokoban
  
  
• For KDE:
  ksokoban
  
  
• A generic version: xsok (GPL'ed) with .rpm and .deb packages available.
  
• Mac, Java, etc. versions...
  

> but face it, you cant write an FPS in java,

Want to tell that to these guys
( http://hem.passagen.se/carebear/fragisland.htm )

Their FAQ is here
( http://hem.passagen.se/carebear/faq.htm )

> but face it, you cant write an FPS in java,

Want to tell that to these guys
( http://hem.passagen.se/carebear/fragisland.htm )

Their FAQ is here
( http://hem.passagen.se/carebear/faq.htm )

1. The 'consumer' market. This tends to be cheapish to middle-priced and is often (distressingly) designed to look like an SUV. You'll probably be able to find something in this which sounds 'adequate'. The correlation between price and performance is moderately strong, though with a fairly high variance. Typically where you'll find the most 'features' (various playback modes, DSP effects, et cetera).
2. The 'audiophile' market. Expensive stuff with minimal controls (often nothing more than just a power buton!) and stylish design . Really tweaked marketing - both the buyers and the sellers use lots of completely unquantifiable terms. With all the sales-driven pseudoscience the correspondence between price and performace is fairly loose.
3. The studio or 'pro audio' market. Designed for people whose job is to understand what's going on and to know what the numbers mean. If you want a flat frequency response, this is the place to look. No bullshit with gold interconnects - if you want good connections, use balanced cables. You also get the advantage that mixing boards are prefered over recivers (and you can get a good one for less than a comparable preamp). Definitely the tightest correspondence between price and performance. The biggest downside I have experienced using these in a home setting is that nothing's typically engineered around a 5.1 configuration. But it is what they used to master most of the things you're listening to.

"They could try to nail it under the DMCA like the MPAA did to DeCSS, except that the software isn't decrypting, it's encrypting. In fact, if RIAA tried, they might be liable under the DMCA for breaking sleepyfellow's encryption."

Haaa-ha!!!

Uh, perhaps we have forgotten about Frag Island...

Ok, so it isn't a complete Quake - but it does show what is possible with the language (and this was in 1997 - I could show other 3D engine examples on the net, but why bother). As for teaching it to kids - heck, it is hard to teach BASIC to kids, esp. nowadays...

I support the EFF - do you?

• http://www.thebates.com/sincity/menue.htm
• http://www.pitt.edu/~wichter/books.html
• http://hem.passagen.se/fm4/sincity.html

that guns are allowed in USA but not links.
Here is a link to decss in europe where source is still legal...

Here it is: Something ate my child. Did I promise too much?

The following is a rant I wrote on Saturday, when I first found out about Mattel being awarded the injunction. Anybody may feel free to copy or reproduce parts of it.

My mirror does not include any of the program files, but only the published analysis, Mattel's complaint, and an English translation of the Swedish copyright law 1960:729. I have no relation to the defendants in this case, and am only an interested third party.

- David Michael Turover(Perpetual Newbie)

(begin rant)

I am not in a good mood right now.

I've just had to troubleshoot NT's braindead permissions scheme, I've taken a test where several of the "correct answers" are wrong, my right wrist is aching(not good for a CS student), and it's barely noon. On my lunch break I crack open Netscape to read the news, and find that a United States federal judge has ordered two cryptology researchers to remove an essay that they had published on a Swedish website.

The two researchers in question are Matthew Skala, a Canadian, and Eddy L. O. Jansson, a Swede. They have reverse-engineered a program called Cyber Patrol, and described in detail the cryptography and computer file formats used by the program.

Cyber Patrol is a product made by Microsystems Software, which is a subsidiary of Mattel. The purpose of the product is to prevent any user of a computer where it is installed from accessing any of a list of several Internet web sites, ostensibly to prevent children from viewing pornography. As part of their report, Skala and Jansson offered a Win32 binary named cphack.exe, a utility which decodes Cyber Patrol's list of blocked URLs(website addresses).

Mattel promptly sued the authors of the report, charging them with copyright violations and ordering them to remove their program, report, and all supporting and related documents and materiel, claiming that the report and software will cost them over $75,000 in lost sales. On Friday March 17th, two days after Mattel's complaint was registered, Judge Edward F. Harrington awarded Mattel a preliminary injunction against the two. Jansson's internet service provider, though in Sweden and not subject to U.S. law, has removed his account and deleted the documents.

Reverse-engineering is the process of examining a product to see how it works. In almost every industry it is not only expected to occur but considered an integral part of the free market. In the software industry, however, products are often sold with "shrinkwrap licenses" that restrict reverse-engineering. A shrinkwrap license is a contract describing terms of use for a product, in which these terms cannot be read until after the product has been purchased, can not be disputed, and must be agreed to for the consumer to use the product which they have already paid for and in most cases cannot return. In most Western countries these shrinkwrap contracts are unenforcable, and in the U.S. their legality is disputed, although the upcoming UCITA bill will make them law.

In most Western countries, including Sweden, reverse-engineering of software is a right explicitly allowed by law that cannot be taken away by a contract(1960:729 26 g). Legal protections against reverse engineering can be obtained; they are called "Patents". Furthermore, an action undertaken in Canada and Sweden should be out of the United States' jurisdiction; However, the U.S. court did not refuse to hear the case as it should have done, and instead granted the injunction by weighing the action under U.S. law.

To make the situation more repugnant, Cyber Patrol doesn't work. And not just Cyber Patrol. It is well known that all content-blocking programs such as Cyber Patrol have a high rate of failure, and a high rate of erroneously blocking acceptable content despite any claims by their marketing departments of being 100% accurate.

This is not the first time Microsystems/Mattel's lawyers have been aggressive. A Microsystems software engineer who was fired from his job for seeking medical attention for his sore wrists has since been sued by Mattel for documenting his experiences. Outrageous lawsuits such as this have been happening often lately, and what is frightening is that in the United States' court culture, they have a good chance of succcess.

The ISP is swedish. (Passagen) I don't think swedish law even allows sharing of this kind of information. I would guess that they won't give any logs out.

May as well start putting up mirrors of the software now, before it gets banned and the authors get arrested for copyright infringement, or license infringement, or stupidity infringement, or some damned thing.

• Original site - essay + software
• My mirror

Check out Frag Island - a Java FPS, that if only had gone all the way...

> But the NetNanny database,

Great, now I have a reason to kick them again for making such a crappy product . (Yes, this is a plug, but I think it's very informative for those who have never been exposed to just how crappy these products are).

What I would like to know is why most of the censorware-producers are trying to hide which sites they are blocking. They usually say it's because they want to "protect their business", but I'm sure we can all agree that is pure bullshit. If one of their competitors wanted to extract the database, they could. The real reason they are trying to hide the facts about their software is because it reflects their own agenda, which seem to be mostly religious in type.

There's an excellent article describing how a group of programmers reverse-engineere d NetNanny, the "censorware" package, to find its hidden list of blocking keywords. They also found a backdoor the makers had left in place, allowing anyone to subvert the program with a master password. I recommend the article both for people interested in reverse engineering and censorware.

- Mskala

> How DO you reverse engineer software?

Using disassembly/decompilation, debugging and/or probing (as in "black-box"). Have a look at this essay I've written. It's about my analysis of the program "Net Nanny", but the techniques used are fairly typical.

>Anyway, am I in over my head even contemplating it?

No. But it depends on why you want to do it. This is not a good way to pick up on new graphics algorithms, unless there is something very specific that you are after. However, you should give it a try if you think you might enjoy this kind of low-level puzzle (for me, it's a puzzle).

> I have a feeling that by the time [...]

Possibly, but I really think you would have the sense to give up before spending that much time :-)

I might aswell tell you what tools I use:

The most powerful tool is NuMegas SoftIce. It's a systemlevel debugger for the Win32 platform (would love a linux version).

After SoftIce comes IDA. IDA is a very competent disassembler. It runs under Win32, but it supports many different processors and file-formats (MZ/NE/PE/ELF/DLL/etc).

Of course, you also need a good hex-editor. I use HIEW.

I primarily use reverse-engineering techniques to discover backdoors and extract encryption algorithms in commercial software (Me and a friend reversed the censorware CyberSitter earlier, which lead to the downfall of the Scientologists "ScienoSitter").

I also use the techniques to explore unknown file formats, see for example the project to reverse the fileformat used in the game Baldur's Gate. When doing this it is much less "debugging/disassembling" then it is hanging around the hexeditor.

If you want to learn, check Fravia's Pages of Reverse Engineering. While there's lot's of crap there, there's also some nuggets of good information. You can also use his messageboard to interact with competent reversers, but beware, you will have to show that you are working on your side too. Don't ask for ready solutions.

Hope this was of help, be in touch if you have any questions.

> How DO you reverse engineer software?

Using disassembly/decompilation, debugging and/or probing (as in "black-box"). Have a look at this essay I've written. It's about my analysis of the program "Net Nanny", but the techniques used are fairly typical.

>Anyway, am I in over my head even contemplating it?

No. But it depends on why you want to do it. This is not a good way to pick up on new graphics algorithms, unless there is something very specific that you are after. However, you should give it a try if you think you might enjoy this kind of low-level puzzle (for me, it's a puzzle).

> I have a feeling that by the time [...]

Possibly, but I really think you would have the sense to give up before spending that much time :-)

I might aswell tell you what tools I use:

The most powerful tool is NuMegas SoftIce. It's a systemlevel debugger for the Win32 platform (would love a linux version).

After SoftIce comes IDA. IDA is a very competent disassembler. It runs under Win32, but it supports many different processors and file-formats (MZ/NE/PE/ELF/DLL/etc).

Of course, you also need a good hex-editor. I use HIEW.

I primarily use reverse-engineering techniques to discover backdoors and extract encryption algorithms in commercial software (Me and a friend reversed the censorware CyberSitter earlier, which lead to the downfall of the Scientologists "ScienoSitter").

I also use the techniques to explore unknown file formats, see for example the project to reverse the fileformat used in the game Baldur's Gate. When doing this it is much less "debugging/disassembling" then it is hanging around the hexeditor.

If you want to learn, check Fravia's Pages of Reverse Engineering. While there's lot's of crap there, there's also some nuggets of good information. You can also use his messageboard to interact with competent reversers, but beware, you will have to show that you are working on your side too. Don't ask for ready solutions.

Hope this was of help, be in touch if you have any questions.

I think I did. Then I must take the opportunity to plug the little technical essay I've just recently written about that particular software.

_The Reversal Of NetNanny_

It's a little heavy on the technical details in the beginning, but you may find it interresting.

/%/)+Eddy

Heather Graham Homepage