some days ago, ingo has backported his exec-shield patch to vanilla 2.4.22. you can find it here. i’ve tested it on my box and it seems to work fine now.
mit opencourseware (ocw)
meanwhile there are 500 courses from 33 academic disciplines online at mit ocw. i’ve taken a glance at some courses’ lecture notes: very good stuff, thanx mit!
i’d wish every university followed this shining example.
blog spa-a-a-a-a-m
gee.. now even my change/b/log is getting spammed (as seen with online guestbooks before)! i’ve just noticed a – now deleted – comment entry looking like a spam message. it obviously wasn’t posted by a person but a bot running on a box at 66.111.50.170. among others, it reads: “If you find this entry inappropriate please remove it from your database!”. as if spam could ever be appropriate.. darn dingo.
it’s time for spamassassin for blogs. eventhough – unlike andreas’ experiences – i’ve noticed more false negatives recently. this might have to do with several rbl shutting down service after suffering dos attacks – allegedly by spammers. furthermore, spammers become more sophisticated, now often sending image-only spam messages, preventing many text-based filtering approaches (as only the headers are left for analyzing).
another (most effective) solution would be to disable anonymous comments (which scuks). if the spamming problem persists, there’s no other choice left atm.
enter the grid?
now it’s all about grid computing. according to oracle to be more precise. what a nice coincidence that they offer a new suite of products which enables you to just enter the grid ;)
if however you believe having heard of “grid computing” long long before, this probably wasn’t a mental delusion..
[update 20031002: there are pictures of the event online now]
Continue reading “enter the grid?”
“security is always political” (w. diffie)
i thought whitfield diffie would give a presentation packed with cryptography theory. surprisingly (and slightly disappointing) there wasn’t any at all. instead he gave an overview of the emergence of cryptography, finishing with an outlook. the three key challenges in tomorrow’s cryptography research according to diffie (don’t cite this – it’s based on my memory, not speech recordings):
1. configuration control [dm: clear definition of a device’s configuration/state]
2. automated computer-to-computer economy [dm: think of web services, distributed systems, automated negotiation and (sub-)contracting]
3. trusted computing [dm: think of “tcpa” etc.]
and it’s all about “who will control information society” in the future (am i the only one who heard a gentle criticism here?).. not very exciting insights actually (most people probably knew this before already). seeing whitfield diffie (i’d call him a “living crypto legend”) in person (wearing long white hair and a beard – a bit like mage gandalf ;) was an impressing experience however.
ccrs @ unizh
some hours ago i’ve attended the grand opening of the center for corporate responsability and sustainability at the university of zurich. a great, very up-to-date initiative well suiting the universality of the unizh.
once again
openssh < v3.7 is vulnerable. nice to know that this server has buffer-overflow protection ;)
the gentoo devs will soon release an updated openssh ebuild.
hm.. i wonder whether i should upgrade to kernel 2.6.0-test5 to get some better performance as well :)
[update 20030917: the first patch doesn’t fix it yet, thus update openssh to v3.7.1. “once again” also applies to windows. both won’t be the last vulnerabilities of their kinds for sure..]
spice up your note taking
not new, but only few people seem to know of this useful device:
filling the gap between a classic notebook and a tabletpc. the pen movement recognition is amazingly accurate and reliable (i’ve seen a demonstration a while ago).
unfortunately, i don’t know where to buy it (preferably in switzerland). anybody?
[update: it’s available at conrad.ch]
leatherette-mouse with tilt-wheel
this new microsoft mouse with a cover made of leatherette looks like a very cool device. true “design follows function”, if you want. features:
– tilt-wheel
– no more rattling noise when scrolling :)
– ergonomic leatherette cover
– wireless (though not bluetooth-based)
– 5 buttons
gotta get it :) i just wonder why i can’t find it listed on the ms homepage yet :( it isn’t this one, is it?
linux going mainstream
linuxtag at the migros klubschule. september 17 is fully booked, but registration is open for another linuxtag held on october 31.
(explanation: the migros klubschule is probably the most mainstream [and also the largest and broadest?] education and further education institute in switzerland)