monthofsaturdays diary feed

Slieve Binnian

2008-10-23T16:28:06Z

A walk up Slieve Binnian with Adrian last week. High winds prevented much climbing, but it was a stunning day anyway.

Steal this... diary

2008-10-13T08:44:55Z

See my previous post about joys of DRM.

Other illegal activities: women trying to vote in 1918, harbouring Jews in 1939, invading Iraq in 2005 and parking on a double yellow line yesterday morning.

3 comments »

Insert title here

2008-10-07T11:48:46Z

Mural tribute to John Peel, author of the lyrics (click-to-bigify)

Just off Stranmillis Road.

Not quite as famous as Banksy?

0 comments »

Phorm

2008-10-03T11:40:30Z

Phorm, the new name of 121Media, is an internet success story. They made enough money creating spyware and viruses from their dubious Russian offices to recently start talks with several big UK internet service providers to get full, unfettered and illegal access to all online activity of all their subscribers. The most prominent ISP is, of course, BT.

This is a major step up the spyware ladder - no longer do you need to go to the trouble of infecting your PC with multiple unreliable viruses to see your whole life data sold to the highest bidder - all of BT's web traffic will now be automatically be watched, analysed, profiled and sold on directly to advertisers and others without any interaction from you at all. In a piece of double-speak George Orwell would be proud of, they're selling this system as 'Webwise,' saying it will make you safer online (like a teacher who always wears a condom in school would help you believe your kids are safer, presumably).

Laugh at the blockable efforts of Google's adverts, relying on user's consent to be logged into their system. Customers need not worry that they won't be included - BT has (illegally) provided no opt out.

And no need to worry it might not work - BT has already run an (illegal) large scale trial of the various systems involved, to "ensure that they are robust and fit for purpose." They didn't let pesky network engineers stop them ensuring the smooth and reliable sale of your data either, by bravely and repeatedly lying through their teeth to when they saw the interception happening and heroically saying they had "no comment about the legality or illegality of the 2006 test."

There is a chink in the system though - all websites have a file called robots.txt to ban named automated systems from scanning the site. Luckily they will be courageously ignoring that file unless all robots are banned (including all search engines). You won't see many people doing that!

They have however made the silly mistake of publishing the email address to contact (website-exclusion@webwise.com) if you want to block the spyware from your site. To test their armour, I sent the following message:

Subject: do not scan my sites

To whom it may concern,

I run two websites, http://www.monthofsaturdays.net and http://www.downshireunite.org. The first is a personal site and the second is the site of my Church youth organisation.

I do not wish to be in any way indexed, scanned visited by anything to do with Phorm, 121Media, Webwise or any other wiretap style advertising programs. Further I do not wish any of my visitors to have any of their traffic intercepted, profiled or otherwise interfered with.

Since I am happy to appear on search engine indexes, I cannot disallow '*' in my robots.txt file - to correctly obey this file your interception software should provide a crawler name which can be explicitly blocked.

Please ensure that all parts of the two sites listed are fully and permanently removed from all of your and your affiliates' advertising interception programmes.

Yours,
Andrew Simpson

3 comments »

Rejected Accepted US Bank Bailout

2008-10-01T15:51:12Z

I'd previously seen graphs like this, which are good at making an impression on relative weights given to issues by a society. So to put the proposed US banking bailout into perspective with other large figures (solving world disease issues etc), here is a useful graph.

Before looking at what rich nations spend of things, it's worth putting the figure into one other frame as well. The combined GDP of the following 100 countries (see my analysis here) is a cool $38bn less than the US plan:

Estonia; Cyprus; Cameroon; El Salvador; Trinidad and Tobago; Panama; Côte d'Ivoire; Iceland; Ethiopia; Tanzania; Bahrain; Jordan; Ghana; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Macao China; Bolivia; Turkmenistan; Honduras; Paraguay; Botswana; Afghanistan; Brunei Darussalam; Zambia; Uganda; Senegal; Jamaica; Gabon; Albania; Nepal; Georgia; Equatorial Guinea; Armenia; Congo Dem. Rep.; Cambodia; Mozambique; Congo Rep.; Macedonia FYR; Madagascar; Chad; Mali; Burkina Faso; Namibia; Malta; Mauritius; Papua New Guinea; Haiti; Nicaragua; Benin; Guinea; Moldova; Niger; Lao PDR; West Bank and Gaza; Mongolia; Tajikistan; Montenegro; Malawi; Kyrgyz Republic; Fiji; Barbados; Zimbabwe; Rwanda; Swaziland; Isle of Man; Mauritania; Togo; Suriname; Central African Republic; San Marino; Sierra Leone; Lesotho; Cape Verde; Belize; Eritrea; Bhutan; Maldives; Guyana; Antigua and Barbuda; Burundi; St. Lucia; Djibouti; Seychelles; Liberia; Gambia The; Grenada; St. Vincent and the Grenadines; St. Kitts and Nevis; Samoa; Vanuatu; Comoros; Timor-Leste; Solomon Islands; Guinea-Bissau; Dominica; Micronesia Fed. Sts.; Tonga; Palau; Marshall Islands; São Tomé and Principe; Kiribati.

All figures are approximate and taken from the first semi-decent source I could found. Fully controlling Malaria and AIDS, providing clean drinking water worldwide and the free health plan for all Americans are projected figures - the rest are actual spending. Sources: Malaria; AIDS; Drinking water; US health plan; NHS; Iraq war (2007 spending)

0 comments »

grepping Linux source code

2008-09-25T14:55:20Z

I see nobody wants a genuine London Olympics flag and medal set? Shame.

In the mean time, some fun. Linux (the open source alternative to Windows) and nearly all programs that run on it are supplied with all source code - exactly what the programmers wrote to make it do what it does. That includes their comments, which includes little rants they wrote. The command grep -r someword ./ searches the current directory for files containing the given word, in this case done from the root directory of the Linux source code: /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.24-19

Note that comments written by the programmer are marked by *stars or /*surrounded like this*/. Most of the searches below have far too many results to post - these are the abridged ones...

grep -ri stupid ./

./include/linux/dvb/frontend.h: FE_IS_STUPID = 0,

./include/linux/fb.h: #define STUPID_ACCELF_TEXT_SHIT

./include/linux/kallsyms.h: /* Stupid that this does nothing, but I didn't create this mess. */

./include/asm-sh/vga.h: /* Stupid drivers. */

./include/asm-sh/watchdog.h: * See asm/cpu-sh2/watchdog.h for explanation of this stupidity..

./include/asm-mips/mipsregs.h: /* Why doesn't stupidity hurt ... */

grep -ri idiot ./

./include/asm-alpha/compiler.h:/* Some idiots over in thought inline should imply

grep -ri damn ./

./scripts/kernel-doc: # * @my_arg: its mine damnit
./include/asm-alpha/io.h: * that damn thing is defined and expands to itself.

./include/asm-sparc/mpmbox.h: /* Oh geese, some other nitwit got a damn watchdog reset. The party's

./include/asm-mips/inst.h: * Damn ... bitfields depend from byteorder :-(

./include/asm-x86/processor_32.h: unsigned long val = 0; /* Damn you, gcc! */

grep -ri ':-)' ./

./arch/ppc/Kconfig: End of Life: not yet :-)

./arch/h8300/Kconfig: shiny Linux system :-)

./include/net/irda/irmod.h: * please do not touch :-)

./include/net/dst.h: /* Oh, Jamal... Seems, I will not forgive you this mess. :-) */

./include/asm-m68k/openprom.h: * crashes the machine, have to test this. :-)

./include/asm-mips/mach-generic/spaces.h: * in the distant future. Nobody will care for a few years :-)

./include/asm-mips/suspend.h: /* Somewhen... Maybe :-) */

./include/asm-sparc64/openprom.h: * crashes the machine, have to test this. :-)

grep -ri typo ./

./include/asm-ia64/signal.h: * This is a stupid typo: the value was _meant_ to be 131072 (0x20000), but I typed it

Words I would never get away with posting here get a couple of hits too. It would be interesting to see how the word count lined up against Windows' source code...

0 comments »

grep -ri stupid ./
./include/linux/dvb/frontend.h:	FE_IS_STUPID = 0,
./include/linux/fb.h:	#define STUPID_ACCELF_TEXT_SHIT
./include/linux/kallsyms.h:	/* Stupid that this does nothing, but I didn't create this mess. */
./include/asm-sh/vga.h:	/* Stupid drivers. */
./include/asm-sh/watchdog.h:	* See asm/cpu-sh2/watchdog.h for explanation of this stupidity..
./include/asm-mips/mipsregs.h:	/* Why doesn't stupidity hurt ... */
grep -ri idiot ./
./include/asm-alpha/compiler.h:/*	Some idiots over in thought inline should imply
grep -ri damn ./
./scripts/kernel-doc:	# * @my_arg: its mine damnit
./include/asm-alpha/io.h:	* that damn thing is defined and expands to itself.
./include/asm-sparc/mpmbox.h:	/* Oh geese, some other nitwit got a damn watchdog reset. The party's
./include/asm-mips/inst.h:	* Damn ... bitfields depend from byteorder :-(
./include/asm-x86/processor_32.h:	unsigned long val = 0; /* Damn you, gcc! */
grep -ri ':-)' ./
./arch/ppc/Kconfig:	End of Life: not yet :-)
./arch/h8300/Kconfig:	shiny Linux system :-)
./include/net/irda/irmod.h:	* please do not touch :-)
./include/net/dst.h:	/* Oh, Jamal... Seems, I will not forgive you this mess. :-) */
./include/asm-m68k/openprom.h:	* crashes the machine, have to test this. :-)
./include/asm-mips/mach-generic/spaces.h:	* in the distant future. Nobody will care for a few years :-)
./include/asm-mips/suspend.h:	/* Somewhen... Maybe :-) */
./include/asm-sparc64/openprom.h:	* crashes the machine, have to test this. :-)
grep -ri typo ./
./include/asm-ia64/signal.h:	* This is a stupid typo: the value was _meant_ to be 131072 (0x20000), but I typed it