This (planting letters to the editor) is just one of the sleazy tactics which PR firms use to promote the products of their corporate masters. Other tactics include everything from producing bogus
"Video News Releases" (which are often picked up by local TV and radio stations and broadcast as "news"), to infiltration and subversion of activist groups. For more on how the PR industry works, the book Toxic Sludge is Good for You! is a must read. Also check out PRWatch.org.
Your Perl advocacy over the years has been very helpful to my perl mast^h^h^h^hhackery, and I have borrowed from your LWP columns in writting LWP servers and user agents.
At my last gig, I had to write an automation to post to LiveLink, a 'Doze based document repository tool. The thing used password logins, cookies, and redirect trickery.
Using LWP (and your sample source code), I wrote a proxy: a server which I pointed my browser to, and a client which pointed to LiveLink. I was then able to observe the detailed shenanigans occuring between my browser and the LiveLink server, which I then simulated with a dedicated client.
I can't imagine any other way to have accomplished it as simply as with LWP, and with your sample code to study. Thanks to you and Gisle Aas (and Larry) for such wonderful tools!
awk != perl. awk (very much less than) perl
on
Perl & LWP
·
· Score: 1
Using Perl is not even neccessary.
Larry Wall borrowed many ideas from Awk when he wrote Perl (as well as ideas from Unix shell, BASIC, C, and Lisp), but awk is NOT a substitute for perl. If awk were as capable of complex parsing jobs as perl, Larry probably would have done something different with his time.
OTOH, Perl *is* a superset of awk. Any awk program can be converted to perl with the utility a2p (which comes with the Perl source distribution), although probably not optimally.
h2k2 photos by Declan McCullagh
on
H2K2 Wrapup
·
· Score: 1
For example, I argue here that being forced to defecate in a bag, pee in the cup, or do anything that requires taking off one's underwear is not proper subject matter for an employment contract (unless of course the job actually requires peeing, pooping, etc.:)
In this case, I would argue that not only is a clause asserting that your employer owns all your works (including those created off hours on your own equipment) is not only not proper subject matter, but it may be shown to be constructive fraud (the deception being: causing you to believe that you must sign such a contract or not work, and that such a clause is proper, and the injury being your loss of your own works, and the loss of your basic freedom to choose what to do with your free time).
Such a clause is more akin to endentured servitude (Prohibited by the 13th Amendment) than a proper employer-employee relationship.
If you didn't understand that clause in the contract, then you certainly didn't agree to it, and that clause, perhaps the entire contract becomes null and void and subject to re-negotiation.
A change has just happened at Google: they are now tracking all off-site links (they used to only track off site links to advertisers). Where you used to get a link like this:
Now they *could* be (and knowing google, probably are) using this to improve the quality of searches, by watching how many links a person takes on a specific query, and assume when they stop, they found what they were looking for, and rate the followed links higher next time a similar search occurs
But perhaps something more sinister is at work. This information could be of great value to direct marketers and police agencies. Google now not only knows your IP address and your browser type, they now know where you are going.
Arguably, Google has the highest quality search results, and they have operated for at least 2 years without advertisements, solely on venture capital (and it must have cost a fortune for the hardware, and all those PhDs). Now they have us all hooked, they begin tracking our movements.
Makes you wonder where all that startup funding came from and what revenue sources will contribute to the payback...
Backdoor/Trojan which is *source code clean*
on
Linux Virus Alert
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Good point. But even if your crack team of security experts inspect and approve each and every line of source code, then do a "make world", you still are not safe!
Long ago Ken Thompson wrote
a paper about a trojan/backdoor that is source code clean. This is usually accompanied with an antecdote about a guy at a computer show struggling to get his demo ready, but he forgets his root password. Just then, a bearded freaky guy from the next booth says "No problem", types a magic password, and viola! The demo proceeds as planned. The story is that every version of/bin/login has this trojan, and that this same bearded freaky guy can log in as root to any unix box on the planet... if he wants to.
It's possible. Read the paper!
PS: Most linux users do not even attempt to build their systems from source. Every linux system is shipped with/bin/cc,/bin/ls,/bin/make, etc. in binary form, and thus, are all suspect. Every linux system *may* be infected with some backdoor/spyware which is just benign enough to have gone undected thus far.
One of the URLs above is for Sergey Lukjanenko's Labyrinth of Reflections, which I'm now reading as it was recommend by a Russian friend. Here is the URL linkified:
http://lib.ru/LUKXQN/labirintengl.txt
Ok, so here's where all in this karass show off how big our yarbles are by tossing in the most arcane references to obscure literary works which we groked in our frappy intoxicated days of youth...
That is, if those even count as sci-fi references...
Simply disguising advertising as content is bad enough, but there is something more sinister at work...
The big search engines are responsible for generating a view of how the web appears, and
being Corporations, they are charted to operate in the public interest. So what about dissident information?
Information police brutality, drug legalization, real abuses of corporate and government power,... etc. How do we know that
these search engines (really just extensions
of the corporo-capitilst state) are not intentionally CENSORING dissident information?
In fact, I have proof that they do. I maintain
several dissident web sites (containing marijuana
legalization advocacy, discussion about my personal encoutners being assaulted by police and by jail, etc). Here is one such page:
http://mu.clarityconnect.net/~bhuston/government/d ick_doctor1.html
Here are recent visits by the Google and Inktomi spiders crawling my site:
Both of these spiders feed data to most major search engines, yet no search engine I can find
actually finds this page. I used a uniquely spelled keyword: Disslehorst (probably a mispelling).
They USED to serve up this page! Just not recently, indicating some newly installed filters.
I will prepare a page detailing the sharp drop off on hits on this page and put it here:
http://mu.clarityconnect.net/~bhuston/censorship
> Actually, it's real simple. SETI@home is closed source. Neither the employee
> running it nor TVA management has the faintest idea what it really does.
I have a friend who's into SETI. I always tell him
that he's really cracking PGP for the Feds on the most massively parallel computer every dreamed of....
Devices intended to enable the blind to
use Graphical User Interfaces are misguided, IMHO.
However, lots of information is text-based,
which makes it suitable for use with a reader.
I have a friend who's blind and he
swears by emacspeak, by T. V. Raman.When used with the freely-available ViaVoice text-to-speech
SDK from IBM, it is the only free solution
available. With it, the blind can send/receive email, browse the web, edit files... pretty much
anything.
Mitnick's pals at 2600 produced
Freedom Downtime. It's playing at film festivals now...
I used to listen to Emmanual Goldstein's
radio show Off the Hook on WBAI in NYC when I lived there. Anyone with
a RealAudio player can catch it Tuesday nights at
8pm EST5EDT (Wed morning @ 00:00 UTC). People should give it a listen. These guys are not the deamons the media makes them into. Eric/Emmanual's courage to speak the truth: that being curious about technology is not a crime, and generally speaking out against tyrrany has been a personal inspiration to me in my life...
I have always been delighted by the high quality of articles in TPJ. Anyone remember "Mathematical Recreations" -> "Metamagical Themas" -> "Computer Recreations"? TPJ used to read like that; every issue. (The reason I subscribed was because of a fascinating
article on voting methods,
which explains the US Republican/Democratic monopoly is due to our one-vote, winner-take-all voting system).
And my praise has nothing to due with the
fact that they published one of my one liners!
Perl Magic Cards:
#43: Seven "Magic Cards." Have a friend think of a number from 1 to 100. Give them cards one
at a time and ask if their number is on the card. Mentally sum the first number on each card
with a "yes" answer. Go into trance, say the magic word "Ultrix!" and announce their
number. Known to win bar bets. (appeared in issue 15)
I knew TPJ had sold out when they published a one-liner on how to convert to Swatch's Internet
Beats, which is really a trivial varient of GMT but with a different meridian, to coincide with
Swatch's world HQ in Switzerland. It reaked of
a "product placement": advertising masquerding
as editorial.
Anyway, Welcome back Jon! Don't get greedy this time, huh?
seems to be fundamental to our American Economic system
is one of the basic mechanisms of slavery
My reading of the Constitution and of history suggests that
Consumer Credit is a form of labor-contracts
(peonage, endentured servitude, etc) which was outlawed by the 13th Amendment.
Yes I will admit that this is not one of
my more popular theories;^) but just a tad bit more provokative than stating "prostution is illegal". Woah! Now this idea really makes ya think! (yawn)
But I guess if you weren't so dull as state the
obvious, you'd probably would have done something
useful with your life (instead of attending law school and becoming a parasite upon decent working
folks;^)
2) "If I don't charge for it, it's not a violation."
False. Whether you charge can affect the damages awarded in court, but that's essentially the only difference. It's still a violation if you give it away -- and there can still be heavy damages if you hurt the commercial value of the property.
Ha! Terry Carroll's FAQ Get's it right. Read 2.9 and the
first item of the 4 point test.
Could be time for Brad revise his FAQ, and perhaps take a more progressive approach. ("anarchistic" would probably be asking for too much from this quy...:)
...
you would have to say that persons who are deprived of property are not victims since there was no bodily injury.
Well, I do have some acquired material possessions, some of which are very important
to me. And I admit that I have a notion that the space around me "belongs" to me, and
if nasty people enter into it without my permission (especially those that try to
coerce me into taking my posessions or otherwise coerce me), then I feel I am violated.
But very often you hear Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians,
capitalists, lawyers, etc. talking about "property rights". I want
to question what "rights" are in general, and especially "property rights".
If things can be owned, then which things? Can land be owned?
(Apparently Chief Seattle didn't think so)
What about dogs, cattle, or chattel (slaves)? Can a "nigger" be owned? How about a whore?
How about a ward of the State (prisoner or mental patient)?
(Personally, I believe that all creatures,
all "things with eyes and
a brain and a beating heart" no matter how different looking from me, are all animus, posessing the animating force. All these things breath (aspire), thus possess spirit, the
breath of life. All animals are born free,
perfect reflections of God, and are natural "persons", and cannot, and should not be
"owned" or considered "ownable". Yes I am vegetarian and try very hard to not consume the products animals)
Consider: Can the title to a man's debt
be owned? Many banks and bill-collecters think so. All over the world, ownership by the many is being displaced by ownership by the powerful few: men and corporations. Can one man or corporation own the ocean, or the earth?
I believe we all have a right to live and be free, to live our lives however we wish,
as long as we are non-violent. But I queston all "rights" beyond this, including
"property rights", because of a basic contradiction.
A right is inherent, intrinsic, or perhaps God-given. It is axiomatic, fundamental,
assumed, not provable, but seems proper. A right is enjoyed by all, thus, non-exclusive.
A right cannot be forfeited, waived, stolen, or transferred. No creature has a "right" to
violate someone else's life or liberty.
Can "property rights" meet this definition? No, because "property rights" are by
nature exclusive. "It's MY property, NOT YOURS!" So-called "Property rights" can only
exist when denied to others. "Property rights" is a paradox!
Like I said, if you follow this line of thinking, it leads you to question some fundamental
principles that we were all brought up believing. Perhaps this is how
the evolution of ideas works.
Slashdot Mirror
This (planting letters to the editor) is just one of the sleazy tactics which PR firms use to promote the products of their corporate masters. Other tactics include everything from producing bogus "Video News Releases" (which are often picked up by local TV and radio stations and broadcast as "news"), to infiltration and subversion of activist groups. For more on how the PR industry works, the book Toxic Sludge is Good for You! is a must read. Also check out PRWatch.org.
If slash exhibits wonky behaviour, it has more to do with the programmers' [bad] ideas and coding than the implemention language.
Your Perl advocacy over the years has been very helpful to my perl mast^h^h^h^hhackery, and I have borrowed from your LWP columns in writting LWP servers and user agents.
At my last gig, I had to write an automation to post to LiveLink, a 'Doze based document repository tool. The thing used password logins, cookies, and redirect trickery.
Using LWP (and your sample source code), I wrote a proxy: a server which I pointed my browser to, and a client which pointed to LiveLink. I was then able to observe the detailed shenanigans occuring between my browser and the LiveLink server, which I then simulated with a dedicated client.
I can't imagine any other way to have accomplished it as simply as with LWP, and with your sample code to study. Thanks to you and Gisle Aas (and Larry) for such wonderful tools!
OTOH, Perl *is* a superset of awk. Any awk program can be converted to perl with the utility a2p (which comes with the Perl source distribution), although probably not optimally.
I found these by accident.
... for "verfication purposes", deserves whatever happens to them.
And another amen!
FYI: Contracts must have certain elements:
- Mutual agreement, more specifically,
- Mutual understanding of the agreement
- Mutual benefit (sometimes called "consideration")
- Mutual right to remedy upon breach
- Mutual obligation
- Competent adult parties (sui juris)
- Proper subject matter
For example, I argue here that being forced to defecate in a bag, pee in the cup, or do anything that requires taking off one's underwear is not proper subject matter for an employment contract (unless of course the job actually requires peeing, pooping, etc.In this case, I would argue that not only is a clause asserting that your employer owns all your works (including those created off hours on your own equipment) is not only not proper subject matter, but it may be shown to be constructive fraud (the deception being: causing you to believe that you must sign such a contract or not work, and that such a clause is proper, and the injury being your loss of your own works, and the loss of your basic freedom to choose what to do with your free time).
Such a clause is more akin to endentured servitude (Prohibited by the 13th Amendment) than a proper employer-employee relationship.
If you didn't understand that clause in the contract, then you certainly didn't agree to it, and that clause, perhaps the entire contract becomes null and void and subject to re-negotiation.
I suggest picking up a good law dictionary, and recommend Barron's Law Dictionary, by Stephen Gifis, and no other. (Just because the a book is bigger or more well known does not make it better. The Gifis book is excellent with clear definitions, and many other law dictionaries are muddled and confused, no doubt published by lawyers to justify their own existance.)
Huh? Now links to offsite locations are normal again. Looks like something they were playing with (at Mar 11 2002, 0058 UTC, restored by 0100 UTC)
A change has just happened at Google: they are now tracking all off-site links (they used to only track off site links to advertisers). Where you used to get a link like this:
http://www.some.site.com/foo/bar
You now get a link like this:http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=3&q= http://www.some.site.com/foo/bar &e=code
Now they *could* be (and knowing google, probably are) using this to improve the quality of searches, by watching how many links a person takes on a specific query, and assume when they stop, they found what they were looking for, and rate the followed links higher next time a similar search occursBut perhaps something more sinister is at work. This information could be of great value to direct marketers and police agencies. Google now not only knows your IP address and your browser type, they now know where you are going.
Arguably, Google has the highest quality search results, and they have operated for at least 2 years without advertisements, solely on venture capital (and it must have cost a fortune for the hardware, and all those PhDs). Now they have us all hooked, they begin tracking our movements.
Makes you wonder where all that startup funding came from and what revenue sources will contribute to the payback...
Good point. But even if your crack team of security experts inspect and approve each and every line of source code, then do a "make world", you still are not safe!
Long ago Ken Thompson wrote a paper about a trojan/backdoor that is source code clean . This is usually accompanied with an antecdote about a guy at a computer show struggling to get his demo ready, but he forgets his root password. Just then, a bearded freaky guy from the next booth says "No problem", types a magic password, and viola! The demo proceeds as planned. The story is that every version of
It's possible. Read the paper!
PS: Most linux users do not even attempt to build their systems from source. Every linux system is shipped with
One of the URLs above is for Sergey Lukjanenko's Labyrinth of Reflections, which I'm now reading as it was recommend by a Russian friend. Here is the URL linkified: http://lib.ru/LUKXQN/labirintengl.txt
Ok, so here's where all in this karass show off how big our yarbles are by tossing in the most arcane references to obscure literary works which we groked in our frappy intoxicated days of youth...
That is, if those even count as sci-fi references...
It wouldn't have sounded so important as
Pathetically
Eclectic
Rubbish
Lister
I've written a little ascii grapher which can be used to track Code Red from your apache logs.
./count_apache_date.byday | ./ascii_graph -c 2
How to graph Code Red attacks by day:
$ grep default.ida access_log |
2001/07/19 18 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
2001/07/20 02 xx
2001/08/01 11 xxxxxxxxxxxxx
2001/08/02 25 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
2001/08/03 26 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
2001/08/04 27 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
2001/08/05 28 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
2001/08/06 29 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
2001/08/07 36 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Source code with examples: (requires perl):
http://www.ip4noman.org/code_red.tgz
Simply disguising advertising as content is bad enough, but there is something more sinister at work...
d ick_doctor1.html
/~bhuston/government/dick_doctor1.html HTTP/1.0" 200 14950 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)" /~bhuston/government/dick_doctor1.html HTTP/1.0" 200 14950 "-" "Mozilla/3.0 (Slurp/cat; slurp@inktomi.com; http://www.inktomi.com/slurp.html)" /~bhuston/government/dick_doctor1.html HTTP/1.0" 200 14950 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)" /~bhuston/government/dick_doctor1.html HTTP/1.0" 304 - "-" "Mozilla/3.0 (Slurp/cat; slurp@inktomi.com; http://www.inktomi.com/slurp.html)"
The big search engines are responsible for generating a view of how the web appears, and being Corporations, they are charted to operate in the public interest. So what about dissident information? Information police brutality, drug legalization, real abuses of corporate and government power,... etc. How do we know that these search engines (really just extensions of the corporo-capitilst state) are not intentionally CENSORING dissident information?
In fact, I have proof that they do. I maintain several dissident web sites (containing marijuana legalization advocacy, discussion about my personal encoutners being assaulted by police and by jail, etc). Here is one such page: http://mu.clarityconnect.net/~bhuston/government/
Here are recent visits by the Google and Inktomi spiders crawling my site:
216.239.46.90 - - [04/Jun/2001:08:04:02 -0400] "GET
216.35.116.52 - - [15/Jun/2001:06:32:25 -0400] "GET
216.239.46.12 - - [01/Jul/2001:08:14:01 -0400] "GET
216.35.116.52 - - [19/Jul/2001:05:33:08 -0400] "GET
Both of these spiders feed data to most major search engines, yet no search engine I can find actually finds this page. I used a uniquely spelled keyword: Disslehorst (probably a mispelling).
They USED to serve up this page! Just not recently, indicating some newly installed filters. I will prepare a page detailing the sharp drop off on hits on this page and put it here: http://mu.clarityconnect.net/~bhuston/censorship
A contract is an AGREEMENT, thus, you should never sign it is there is anything in it which which you don't agree, like pre-employment poop-scans.
You always have a choice: http://www.ip4noman.org/refusal/
Devices intended to enable the blind to use Graphical User Interfaces are misguided, IMHO. However, lots of information is text-based, which makes it suitable for use with a reader.
I have a friend who's blind and he swears by emacspeak, by T. V. Raman.When used with the freely-available ViaVoice text-to-speech SDK from IBM, it is the only free solution available. With it, the blind can send/receive email, browse the web, edit files... pretty much anything.
Here are the links:
Like they don't get enough from ADM, GE, Pepsico, GM,
If you want to give money/support to true independent media, here are some:
Mitnick's pals at 2600 produced Freedom Downtime. It's playing at film festivals now...
I used to listen to Emmanual Goldstein's radio show Off the Hook on WBAI in NYC when I lived there. Anyone with a RealAudio player can catch it Tuesday nights at 8pm EST5EDT (Wed morning @ 00:00 UTC). People should give it a listen. These guys are not the deamons the media makes them into. Eric/Emmanual's courage to speak the truth: that being curious about technology is not a crime, and generally speaking out against tyrrany has been a personal inspiration to me in my life...
I have always been delighted by the high quality of articles in TPJ. Anyone remember "Mathematical Recreations" -> "Metamagical Themas" -> "Computer Recreations"? TPJ used to read like that; every issue. (The reason I subscribed was because of a fascinating article on voting methods, which explains the US Republican/Democratic monopoly is due to our one-vote, winner-take-all voting system).
And my praise has nothing to due with the fact that they published one of my one liners! Perl Magic Cards:
I knew TPJ had sold out when they published a one-liner on how to convert to Swatch's Internet Beats, which is really a trivial varient of GMT but with a different meridian, to coincide with Swatch's world HQ in Switzerland. It reaked of a "product placement": advertising masquerding as editorial.
Anyway, Welcome back Jon! Don't get greedy this time, huh?
- seems to be fundamental to our American Economic system
- is one of the basic mechanisms of slavery
My reading of the Constitution and of history suggests that Consumer Credit is a form of labor-contracts (peonage, endentured servitude, etc) which was outlawed by the 13th Amendment.Yes I will admit that this is not one of my more popular theories
But I guess if you weren't so dull as state the obvious, you'd probably would have done something useful with your life (instead of attending law school and becoming a parasite upon decent working folks
This is an except from the "Copyright Myths FAQ" by
Ha! Terry Carroll's FAQ Get's it right. Read 2.9 and the first item of the 4 point test.
Could be time for Brad revise his FAQ, and perhaps take a more progressive approach. ("anarchistic" would probably be asking for too much from this quy...:)
Sorry about that. Looks like my paste bounced...
Well, I do have some acquired material possessions, some of which are very important to me. And I admit that I have a notion that the space around me "belongs" to me, and if nasty people enter into it without my permission (especially those that try to coerce me into taking my posessions or otherwise coerce me), then I feel I am violated.
But very often you hear Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, capitalists, lawyers, etc. talking about "property rights" . I want to question what "rights" are in general, and especially "property rights".
If things can be owned, then which things? Can land be owned? (Apparently Chief Seattle didn't think so) What about dogs, cattle, or chattel (slaves)? Can a "nigger" be owned? How about a whore? How about a ward of the State (prisoner or mental patient)?
(Personally, I believe that all creatures, all "things with eyes and a brain and a beating heart" no matter how different looking from me, are all animus, posessing the animating force. All these things breath (aspire), thus possess spirit, the breath of life. All animals are born free, perfect reflections of God, and are natural "persons", and cannot, and should not be "owned" or considered "ownable". Yes I am vegetarian and try very hard to not consume the products animals)
Consider: Can the title to a man's debt be owned? Many banks and bill-collecters think so. All over the world, ownership by the many is being displaced by ownership by the powerful few: men and corporations. Can one man or corporation own the ocean, or the earth?
I believe we all have a right to live and be free, to live our lives however we wish, as long as we are non-violent. But I queston all "rights" beyond this, including "property rights", because of a basic contradiction.
A right is inherent, intrinsic, or perhaps God-given. It is axiomatic, fundamental, assumed, not provable, but seems proper. A right is enjoyed by all, thus, non-exclusive. A right cannot be forfeited, waived, stolen, or transferred. No creature has a "right" to violate someone else's life or liberty.
Can "property rights" meet this definition? No, because "property rights" are by nature exclusive . "It's MY property, NOT YOURS!" So-called "Property rights" can only exist when denied to others. "Property rights" is a paradox!
Like I said, if you follow this line of thinking, it leads you to question some fundamental principles that we were all brought up believing. Perhaps this is how the evolution of ideas works.
Peace,