Slashdot Mirror

I know that captchas in use at Yahoo! such as The Gimp and Trotsky (cute names, heh) are effectively OCR proof (~20% success rate, IIRC) but what about the security codes which have been used on blogs? As a Movable Type user, I'm concerned about the recent spate of crapflooding caused with this script and even though the implementation of captchas as security codes has slowed the advances of crapflooders, are there any other forms of image verification in the pipeline which we can use?

Back in university I did a double major in Computer Science and Literature (there were not many in both programs!). I used to write Perl Poetry for fun, not many Haiku's mind you, I tried to make my poems dual purpose, poetry, and perform real work.

I actually wrote a Perl Poetry CGI script, check the results
And the source (open!)

Back in university I did a double major in Computer Science and Literature (there were not many in both programs!). I used to write Perl Poetry for fun, not many Haiku's mind you, I tried to make my poems dual purpose, poetry, and perform real work.

I actually wrote a Perl Poetry CGI script, check the results
And the source (open!)

What the NIST fails to mention here is that most of this comes from internal policies they have implemented to counteract their previous approach to computer security, which was incredibly lax. These recommedations come first hand.

Read an account of their extensive security lapses in the late 90's here

This really is a good book, for an extensive review of the first 2 books in the trillogy go to:

The Golden Age
The Phoenix Exultant

This really is a good book, for an extensive review of the first 2 books in the trillogy go to:

The Golden Age
The Phoenix Exultant

Here's another perspective on the CCNA book.

Gay Nigger Association of America -- January 16, 2004, 19:36PM GMT

The GNAA (Gay Nigger Association of America) is a trolling organisation, tirelessly working in all areas of research and development to carry out assertive actions and produce new technologies. Our flagship production thus far has been FloodMT, software designed to crapflood Movable Type blogs. This is an important strategic anti-blogging weapon and as such we deemed it imperative that it be hosted reliably and in the public eye.

We chose to host our project on Sourceforge. Sourceforge is a site owned by OSDN which hosts open source projects of almost any nature. Having witnessed the registration of many useless projects on Sourceforge, we felt that their hosting of FloodMT would be acceptable. They deemed it so, approving our project within 24 hours of submission.

The GNAA finished uploading its materials and produced a complete website, all of which were kept up to date as development progressed rapidly. Then without warning, on January 15, all of the project's files were erased. The website, floodmt.sourceforge.net, was taken down and all of our CVS and file releases were lost. The same occurred for the Sourceforge project shitstorm, and all of the developers of FloodMT had their Sourceforge users deleted and access revoked.

This is considered by us an offensive action. As such, we declare a jihad on OSDN. At 8PM GMT this evening until further notice, all OSDN owned websites, subsidiaries, employees and administrators will be considered viable targets for attack by us. These targets include Slashdot, Sourceforge and Freshmeat though others may be assaulted.

http://terrato.org/wiki.pl?OSDN_Press_Release

Gay Nigger Association of America -- January 16, 2004, 19:36PM GMT

The GNAA (Gay Nigger Association of America) is a trolling organisation, tirelessly working in all areas of research and development to carry out assertive actions and produce new technologies. Our flagship production thus far has been FloodMT, software designed to crapflood Movable Type blogs. This is an important strategic anti-blogging weapon and as such we deemed it imperative that it be hosted reliably and in the public eye.

We chose to host our project on Sourceforge. Sourceforge is a site owned by OSDN which hosts open source projects of almost any nature. Having witnessed the registration of many useless projects on Sourceforge, we felt that their hosting of FloodMT would be acceptable. They deemed it so, approving our project within 24 hours of submission.

The GNAA finished uploading its materials and produced a complete website, all of which were kept up to date as development progressed rapidly. Then without warning, on January 15, all of the project's files were erased. The website, floodmt.sourceforge.net, was taken down and all of our CVS and file releases were lost. The same occurred for the Sourceforge project shitstorm, and all of the developers of FloodMT had their Sourceforge users deleted and access revoked.

This is considered by us an offensive action. As such, we declare a jihad on OSDN. At 8PM GMT this evening until further notice, all OSDN owned websites, subsidiaries, employees and administrators will be considered viable targets for attack by us. These targets include Slashdot, Sourceforge and Freshmeat though others may be assaulted.

http://terrato.org/wiki.pl?OSDN_Press_Release

here you go

there is more info on this here

Certain scenarios have become standard fare, almost cliches, within the science fiction world. The end of civilization, indeed the death of man himself, due to his constant meddling with the environment, other life forms, and his own germ plasm have been envisaged many times before. This book remains a cut above most earlier attempts, as it adds a very believable human face to the disaster, ties it to both man's dreams and his nightmares, and wraps it inside a potent love triangle.

From the beginning of this book, where we meet Snowman, possibly the last true human, living in a tree and dependent on the half-human Children of Crake, till the very end of this book, where the full horror of the situation is clearly exposed, there is a sense of inevitability to events, a clear line to its envisioned world from the headlines of today. As Snowman tells his tale via flashbacks to his own past, a picture is developed of technology both fighting and aiding the deleterious effects of prior technologies. From the global warming induced drowning of the coasts and the collapse of world's resources abilities to feed an ever-growing population, to terrorist and greedy corporations designs of new diseases and environmentally harmful crosses of various animal species, each element piles on to background structure. In the foreground we follow Jimmy (Snowman's original name) and his childhood friend Glenn (Crake) as they go through school and find jobs as part of the elite, those whose mental abilities make them employable by the movers and shakers of the world, the genetic research laboratories. During their joint exploration of the internet, they run into Oryx, a child prostitute, who will eventually figure prominently in their lives.

Crake is a very interesting character, a super-genius who keeps his own emotions hidden, sometimes even from himself, as he first conceives of and then implements the idea of designing a better human. A human who is not subject to wild emotional swings of love, who will not have the need to defend property as he will live on grass and sunshine, who will be carefully isolated from any contact with violence-causing ideas such as 'God' and 'mine'. But Crake is not immune to being human himself, and is in fact dependent on others, primarily Oryx and Jimmy, which is really his flaw. Jimmy is the perennial follower, but when forced to take charge, his actions become the final lynch-pin in the ultimate disaster and his tales the beginning of a new mythology. Oryx is the ultimate woman, fully caring and giving, perhaps too much so, without the ability to turn others to a line of action of her choosing - but perhaps she never wished to. These characters grew on me as I learned more about them, as each had characteristics I could see in myself, different parts of a mirror.

The power of this book lies in the dynamic between the dream and the practical, between the intent and the result, between the giving and receiving of love. There are several layers of meaning and symbol buried within its fairly conventional story, layers that built an emotionally powerful edifice in my mind, an edifice completed with the last scene of this book. Sad and depressing, with little room for hope, a well depicted portrait of man as he is, unvarnished.

more reviews here

3ghz?? fuck that, i'm running a six gigahertz P4!!!

X-bit labs - Hardware news - AMD Athlon 64 3400+ Processor is available now

AMD launches new mobile, desktop Athlon chips (IT World)

Reviews: Athlon 64 3400+

AMD extends Athlon 64 family

AMD Athlon 64 3400+ Processor launched

AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3400+ Joins the Line-Up

this article has already been posted in the november issue of Terrato local newsletter (the town is particularly known for being fond of horses.)

I am not supposed to tell you this: but given that GPS is not that cheap, the locals are considering switching to some 802.11b application that can track locations via triangulation, so if there are any enterprising slashdotters reading this, let it be known that we would pay quite nicely for a low-overhead solution!

Contact me at mark@pobox.com if you think you qualify.

We at the Terrato institute for social sciences actually confirmed this by studying the broken-computer rate sale on Ebay, it appears there has been a 40x increase in the sale of broken computer parts in the last 3 years (mind you, we accounted for the general rise of auctions.) The equipment was mostly network gear and motherboards, which we found particularly strange.

There is definately something strange going on.

the Terrato institute for astronomical sciences (which contracted with NASA on many occasions) has been kind enough to provide a download mirror for the Linux version of Maestro. It can be acquired here