Articles – Page 88

Norfolk

Claire and I’s grand tour of the United Kingdom brought us yesterday to Terrington St. Clement, near Kings’ Lynn, in Norfolk, where Claire’s dad lives.

As I anticipated, this has resulted in me here, too, helping to repair computers. Claire’s dad’s PC was a mess – Ad-Aware reported 183 malware/adware programs, Norton Anti-Virus reported 10 threats (2 of which were actually installed viruses). I don’t know what the solution is to the problems caused by hundreds of thousands of new people – who do not know about the risks – appearing on the internet, but I hope that somebody works it out soon: even the BBC have started to take notice of the increasing problem of “zombie” networks, particularly in the UK, which lead to denial of service attacks, spam floods, breaches of privacy, and annoying pop-up ads.

And there’s no excuse, really – Windows users can get AVG (anti-virus), ZoneAlarm (firewall), Ad-Aware (anti-malware/adware), Firefox (web browser) and Thunderbird (e-mail client) and be safer by hundreds of orders of magnitude than they are with Internet Explorer and a wide-open pipe. And all of this software is free. With the increase of the awareness of this problem by mainstream news sources, you’d think it would spur people into protecting themselves (just like the coverage of the “War On Terror” by mainstream media made people paranoid about radiological/chemical/biological terrorist attacks). Ah well.

In any case: we’ve been traipsing around North Norfolk, meeting people and eating excessively. I’ve just about recovered from a minor leg sprain I sustained while ice skating in Preston earlier this week, and all is well.

Glad to hear that Sian‘s Troma Night went well (can’t remember where I heard that from). Missing all you Aberites. Hope to see you all soon.

Preston

Things achieved so far:

Got to Preston in three hours, which is pretty good going. We got stuck behind some idiots who seemed to think that “national speed limit” meant 30mph for awhile, but by the time we got to the big roads it was plain sailing. Without sails. Or a boat.
Fixed my dad’s wireless network. He has a wireless network comprising his desktop PC, each of my sisters’ desktop PCs, and an ADSL router. Having recently gotten a new laptop he wanted to connect this to the network, too, so he got an old USB wireless adapter he had and plugged it in. Hmm.. can’t seem to join the network: can see it, but can’t join it. So he goes and buys a new adapter – this time, one which was of the same brand as the ones of which his network was already composed. Nope, still nothing. Eventually, has patience at an end, he borrowed my sister’s adapter… and it worked fine.If you’re a network geek, see if you can think what the problem might be before you read on.
The problem was that his network had been set up to use MAC address locking – preventing access to the router by anything but a list of particular hardware devices (or, for non-geeks: every piece of networking equipment has a supposedly globally unique number assigned to it when it is manufactured: my dad’s router had been configured only to allow particular numbers to connect to it ). So, it was a simple challenge to allow these new devices access to his network. The net result seemed to be that there was one useless wireless adapter.

But here’s where things got really silly: it later turned out that his new laptop had a built-in wireless adapter, and he’d never known. All he had to do was actually install the drivers for it (to be fair, you’d think on a pre-built laptop they might have done that for him) and voila: he was on the network… two useless wireless adapters.
Installed Firefox as the default browser on all of the IE-default machines we’ve come across.
Met the puppies (4), the chickens (3½), the rabbit (1, with 3 others loose somewhere in the scrubland behind the house – kids on the neighbourhood sometimes catch one – at great risk and loss of blood [theirs’, not the rabbit’s] – and ransom it back), and the hermit crabs (2) for the first time. Re-met the dog (1), and the cats (4… 5…? 6??? who knows). My mum’s house is becoming quite the menagerie. I’ll try to get some pictures online before we leave here on Monday.
Taught my parents to play Fluxx. My dad turns out to be surprisingly… lucky… at it.
Drank mead from the holy isle of Lindisfarne, where my dad has recently been.

By the way – Paul: I’ve left a key to TheFlat with Bryn, so there’s no need to camp out at the cafe all day in anticipation of Troma Night tonight: have a good one, guys!

Right – off to watch Spongebob Squarepants.

All The Fun Of Aberystwyth

Aber‘s great this time of year – late enough that the weather becomes favourable, but early enough that the tourists haven’t arrived. Alec came down the day before yesterday for an interview for the PGCE course he wants to get onto, which was cool, ‘cos I haven’t seen him in a long while, and we barbequed some burgers and sausages on the beach.

Claire and I are off to Preston this afternoon: sadly my gran’s not well and can’t make it there, too, but it’ll be nice to see my family regardless… not to mention the new puppies. As usual, both my dad and Claire’s dad have got various technical things they need fixing while I’m visiting each of them; joy. You’d think going to see my folks might be a break from work, but never mind…

Quote of the day from Alex @ work: “This is Software Engineering…. it’s not… real life!”

Hide and Seek In The Castle

Yesterday, as Claire and I ate our lunch, we had an idea. It was a gorgeous Sunday, warm like Easter break should be, so we thought – why not gather those folks who remain in town for a big game of hide & seek in Aberystwyth Castle. This was great fun last Autumn and the easter before: childish fun, running, hiding, diving over rocks and injuring oneself… fab.

We were surprised at how many people were able to join us: Matt, Katie, Sundeep, Bryn (until he was called away by the prospect of a barbeque with some friends in Llanbadarn), Liz, Andy K (recently discharged from A&E after burning his hand with a frying pan, the idiot), Faye, Andy R, Sian, and a mystery girl called ‘DD’.

We played until the sun went down, which always makes the game extra-fun and challenging, then retired to Kanes’ for beer (or whiskey) and chit-chat. By the end of the evening, the pub was ours alone.

Other people have things to say about the evening, too:

Dan And Claire’s Grand UK Tour

Well, the plans are set now.

On Thursday night (or Friday), Claire and I will be travelling up to Preston to spend the weekend with my folks. Hopefully my gran will be able to make it down, too. We’ll also get a chance to look at the new puppies (pic 1, pic 2, pic 3), who’ll be barely two weeks old by that point.

Then, on Monday, we’ll travel down the country to Norfolk and spend a few days with Claire’s dad, returning to Aber on Thursday (31st March).

Of course, this means that we won’t be around for Geek Night on Friday (which is cancelled) or Troma Night on Saturday (which Paul is taking charge of).

By the way – you’re (probably) looking at the new ‘style’ of my weblog. Comments welcome.

Seymore Butts

Is this actor real? Seymore Butts (say it out loud) is listed on the IMDb, director of such films as Anal Surprise Party, Female Ejaculation Review, and Tongue In Cheeks, as well as over 60 other films. Also performed in 50 films… most of which don’t have an IMDb score…

…so it’s an anonymous pornstar with a thing for doing it up the arse, big deal. But here’s the interesting thing: he was most recently in a film called Slaughter Party, which also starred… Lloyd Kaufman.

The world is a funny place.

In related news, you can read the full story of Will Keenan‘s appearance on the Troma Night bulletin board, including a video we sent back to him and Lloyd, thanking them, on a special thread we set up. Have fun!

Troma Night Makes International News

If you come to Troma Night tonight, I’ll explain the above picture (click for a larger version). It’s got something to do with this new account on the web site.

Fucking marvellous.

The Starling

I have a hard time believing that this story is true: it’s just too crazy – but the photos are good and hard to forge without more resources than your average internet prankster. So, here’s the tale as it was told to me…

There’s a company in the States that sells automatic car washers as a complete solution, including the washing system, cash box, installation of the building, etc. These are completely automated: you drive up, put your money into the machine, then drive through.

In any case; after the installation of a particular one of these machines, the owner noticed that the return from the machine was not so much as should be expected. Diagnostics were run and the cash processor seemed to be okay, so everybody was at a loss. The owner even went so far as to accuse the supplier’s staff of having keys to his cashbox, and returning to the scene to steal the money.

Eventually, at his wits end, the owner set up security cameras to try to catch the thief in the act. Here are some stills from the footage:

The first image. Yes, that’s a starling that’s just landed on the coin return slot.

And there’s the starling, wriggling in to the coin return slot, where, presumably, it’s pushing it’s way up into the cash box through the return chute.

The starling with some coins!

The starling’s dropped a couple of coins, but is still wriggling to get free of the slot with it’s remaining prize.

Apparently, they later determined that it was not one, but several, birds who were robbing the car wash. Following them discovered a cache of loose change on the roof of the car wash and beneath an exposed root of a nearby tree.

So; what do you think – real or fake?

Physical Device Fingerprinting Over TCP

A PhD student in San Deigo has written a fascinating paper which will spook internet anonymity freaks – Remote Physical Device Fingerprinting – which describes how a physical computer can be uniquely identified on the internet, regardless of operating system, IP address, or data sent, just by looking carefully at it’s TCP packets (which contain the data for a large amount – perhaps a majority – of the internet’s traffic, including all web and e-mail traffic).

The technique works by observing the deviation in the timestamps sent (in accordance with the widely-adopted RFC 1323: TCP Extensions for High Performance, specified back in 1992). Each computer’s hardware clock is made from a separate piece of quartz, and each quartz crystal is unique in it’s imperfections. By measuring these imperfections across the internet, it’s possible (with enough sample data) to identify a computer individually, which has implications both good (computer forensics) and bad (anonymity).

The paper itself [PDF] is well worth reading. And, for those that are paranoid about their anonymity online, here’s how to “turn off” this feature of TCP for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Linux:

Windows 2000/XP – Run RegEdit; navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters; add (or edit, if already present) the DWORD “Tcp1323Opts” to 1. This disables TCP timestamps, but leaves Window Scaling (a really useful TCP/IP enhancement) enabled.
Linux – echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_timestamps

Of course, the absence of timestamps from your machine may, if you’re in a small enough sample group, single you out even more, but at least you’re not globally unique any more; which from an anonymity perspective is a really good thing.

Things Bots Shouldn’t Learn

This afternoon, I’ve taught Iggy, the robot who looks after the RockMonkey ChatRoom:

How to play The Game. Damn – I’m out. He’s not very good at it, and, by proxy, neither am I.
Comprehension of facts expressed as “concept ARE fact”, rather than “concept IS fact”, and about knowing “who” people are (ask “Iggy, who is Ava_Work”, for example, or teach him who other people are…).

The by-product of this is that I’ve been learning to program in Tcl. And as a result, discovering why nobody writes in Tcl. Here’s a quote from bash.org, which I found in the bMotion source code:

<Procyan> is there like 1 person on earth that knows tcl/tk and is writing all of the apps?
<unSlider> procyan: no, there are a bunch of people who dont know tcl/tk but are writing apps for it anyway

Opera 8’s Solution To IDN Exploit

I’m sure you’ve all seen the recent Internationalized Domain Name exploit, which affects most web browsers (except for Internet Explorer – shocker! – because it doesn’t yet have the power to support internationalized domain names): if you haven’t, why not visit paypal.com – looks just like the real thing; doesn’t it: the browser bar says you’re at PayPal’s real site, but you’re not. That first ‘a’ in the name is an international character (actually the letter ‘a’ from the Cyrillic character set, which is just slightly different from a Western ‘a’, if you look closely. Of course, this leads to potentially thousands of dangerous phishing exploits, tricking users into exposing their bank account details to random Nigerians.

Opera, makers of a stunning web browser that I’m not quite sure I should be abandoning yet, have announced their solution to this problem (which isn’t actually a web browser problem at all, but a specification problem): IDN domain names from outside of places which are expected to need then (e.g. dot-jp, etc.) will be displayed longhand, and secure sites (https) will display their certificate holder’s name – longhand – alongside the domain name in the address bar.

Of course, unless you’re using Opera 8 beta, the only way to be sure you’re safe from this exploit is to manually type in every link you follow.

MEng Dissertation – Hamster Music

No, I’m not talking about that god-awful de-da-de-da-de-do-do-do de-da-de-do do thingy: I’m talking about this ingenious MEng dissertation project, in which the student hooked up six hamsters to a MIDI device and, with some clever hardware and software, used their movements to compose music. If you look at the site, be sure to download the video clip or at least a sample of the music produced!

Now That’s Customer Service

Do you remember in the middle of last week I finally discovered that I could make Firefox have all the features I loved in Opera, using plugins? Well; I’m honoured to report that my comments haven’t gone un-noticed: I’ve recieved a comment on that post from Jonny Axelsson, dude who does standards-related stuff for Opera. To save you going back there, he writes:

In the meantime we’re getting out Opera 8, so it would be even harder to compete…

Not much to say on the matter, but hey. I tried Opera 8 beta, and it’s fab, but it’ll need to improve on the web developer and adblocking things if I’m to re-adopt it as my browser of choice. That said, I’m still using Opera at home, because I haven’t been bothered yet to download all those Firefox extensions that make it “as good as ” Opera for the things I need in a browser.

Right – Shrink is here – time to break the internet again.

Photopia, Again

I wrote the other day about Photopia, one of the most brilliant and unusual pieces of interactive fiction I’ve ever experienced. Finally, JTA gave it a go, and loved it too – and he and I have been spending the last few days discussing some of the really, really clever bits and putting our own explanations to them. There are so many questions left unanswered, even after having completed the story, and I’m sure we’ll both be going back and playing it again.

Why hasn’t anybody else played yet? Well; it’s possible I just didn’t make it quite accessible enough. So I’ve packaged Photopia into a single-file executable. Just download and run it, and you’ll have it installed on your system. It takes up less than a megabyte of space and it’s brilliant not only as entertainment but also as a work of fiction.

Download Photopia – it’s self-extracting, self-installing. All you have to do it play it. Windows only. Click here and give it a go.

Rejected Crayons

You won’t find these from Crayola…

Spousal Abuse Black and Spousal Abuse Blue
Flu Phlegm Green
Found In Diaper Gold
Klan White
Los Angeles Air Brown
McDonald's Burger Grey
Melanoma Tan
Time O' The Month
Tin Man Johnson Silver