Censorship in Austrailia

Why do people want to censor everything? Is it out of a need to feel in complete control of everything? If you don't like it, then you don't have to play it or read it or watch it, and you can "suck my balls" as Eric Cartman would say. This is ridiculous.

Scheme to Detect Steganography in Images

But it can't detect the scheme I used to embed into IPv6 addresses for my honors thesis. Mine is meant to be completely random, unlike the noisy redundant data within images or sound files. New Scientist Article here.

Hacking Online Voting Sites

This is a hilarious article about some students who automated repeated votes for their schools on the Victoria's Secret contest to see who would be the first school with their name on the collegiate ladies' undergarments. This is not something that is hard at all to do, if it's anything like the other schemes I've seen. For instance, when ESPN hosted an online vote for the Heisman trophy that was actually going to factor the public opinion into who received the trophy, I thought about writing an automated Perl script to vote for D-Mac over and over (it's BS that they denied him the Heisman as a sophomore, based on the fact that he was a sophomore, and then gave Timmy Tebow the Heisman as a sophomore no problem). The ESPN site basically just checked a cookie that it set in your browser to make sure you couldn't vote multiple times, and the manual solution was as simple as deleting your browser cache. It would have been trivial to automate this with a program that accepted and used cookies temporarily for each vote and then dropped them. I guess none of the big tech schools' students that the article mentioned have any interest in football though, because that type of attack never occurred. For the right to be the first school with their name on some panties though...

HOWTO: Get Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2 Working on Ubuntu 8.04

I just had to jump through a few hoops to get the Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2 gamepad to work on my Ubuntu installation, and I wanted to write down how I got it working. This is mainly so I will have a reminder, if I ever have to do this again in the future, but it could help someone.

First, when I plugged the thing in, it was already recognized, which I could see via the dmesg and lsusb commands.


From dmesg (after pluggin in the USB receiver for the cordless controller)

[ 933.085195] usb 5-2: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
[ 933.094885] usb 5-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 933.151596] input: Logitech Logitech Cordless RumblePad 2 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb5/5-2/5-2:1.0/input/input12
[ 933.203335] input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.10 Gamepad [Logitech Logitech Cordless RumblePad 2] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-2

From lsusb

Bus 005 Device 003: ID 046d:c219 Logitech, Inc.

So, from this, I knew at least some default drivers or something were working. This "hid" stuff and the uhci_hcd relates to the driver module, I believe.

I installed jscalibrator, but it didn't recognize any input, and the GUI was poorly presented with words running off the left side of the page and whatnot.

I then installed joystick with

sudo apt-get install joystick

Then I used the following two commands:

jscal /dev/input/js0
jstest /dev/input/js0

I could then see feedback in the jstest program when using any of the buttons on the gamepad.

After all of this, the dpad and analog directional sticks would not work in znes, although all other buttons would. After unplugging the receiver and plugging it into a different USB port, however, all buttons worked in znes. Now I just need to get sound working, but I wanted to log my steps for getting the gamepad working first.

UPDATE: 11-30-2008

I was able to get sound working the other day by installing this package: libsdl1.2-alsa. Then running the command

zsnes -ad sdl

The normal start command wasn't giving me sound. With the '-ad sdl' argument, the sound was there, but it was crackly (yes, I used that word). Setting the sample rate to 48000 seems to have solved that problem, however. Also, I checked out this forum topic on the Ubuntu forums, and acoustibop mentions installing an sdl library package that includes all the different sound architectures (including alsa and oss).

As a general improvement for sound in games, try installing libsdl1.2debian-all. This will remove libsdl1.2-alsa but don't worry, support for ALSA will be reinstalled as part of libsdl1.2debian-all.

So, I did that as well, and now the command

zsnes

by itself launches the emulator with sound enabled, and everything seems to work just fine.

The Universe as Information or the Expression of an Idea

Here is a good article from New Scientist that is more confirmation of what today's science is telling us about the nature or reality. "What makes up things are not more things, but what makes up things are ideas, thoughts, information," from What the Bleep do we Know

From the article:

Matter is built on flaky foundations. Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum.
[...]
Each proton (or neutron) is made of three quarks - but the individual masses of these quarks only add up to about 1% of the proton's mass. So what accounts for the rest of it? Theory says it is created by the force that binds quarks together, called the strong nuclear force. In quantum terms, the strong force is carried by a field of virtual particles called gluons, randomly popping into existence and disappearing again. The energy of these vacuum fluctuations has to be included in the total mass of the proton and neutron
[...]
The Higgs field is also thought to make a small contribution, giving mass to individual quarks as well as to electrons and some other particles. The Higgs field creates mass out of the quantum vacuum too, in the form of virtual Higgs bosons. So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual.

Another Minority Report Human Computer Interface

From the article:

The SOE's combination of gestural i/o, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels brings the first major step in computer interface since 1984; starting today, g-speak will fundamentally change the way people use machines at work, in the living room, in conference rooms, in vehicles. The g-speak platform is a complete application development and execution environment that redresses the dire constriction of human intent imposed by traditional GUIs. Its idiom of spatial immediacy and information responsive to real-world geometry enables a necessary new kind of work: data-intensive, embodied, real-time, predicated on universal human expertise.

NSA History - Report

A new NSA history report was released. I'd like to read it if I have time. Here is an article about it from the Wall Street Journal. This may be the report, but I just wanted to mark it as something to go back to. I haven't actually read through any of this. No time right now.

New Star Trek Movie

Can't wait for it to come out in May '09.

Geting Files From Firefox Cache - Two Methods

The hard way:
type "about:cache" in the url bar (without quotes). Go to the folder specified, and grab the file.

The easy way:

1) Right-click on page.
2) Select "View Page Info"
3) Click the "Media" tab (for flash files, images, etc)
4) Find your file
5) "Save As"

State of Surveillance

I am going to start a running log of all Orwellian surveillance news called the "State of Surveillance." Not surprisingly most of the news in this log will probably be coming out of the UK. This first article on black boxes that will monitor and record all internet traffic.

Under Government plans to monitor internet traffic, raw data would be collected and stored by the black boxes before being transferred to a giant central database.

This Slashdot entry says that it would monitor all upstream traffic only.

Threading the Needle

This is a picture just recently taken by the Hubble space telescope after it was switched over to backup systems after the failure of its primary components. It shows two galaxies after the one on the left passed through the center of the one on the right. The red patch in the lower left of the galaxy on the right used to be its nucleus.

Don't Buy Toshiba Products

Just saw this article about a Toshiba with 3 GPUs, and I wanted to say, "DO NOT BUY IT." Do not ever buy crappy ass overheating Toshiba products. Ever. I hope the Google web crawlers find the words in this post, so people can search them. Ever type in something like "fuck mother fucking bullshit toshiba" just to see what comes up? Well maybe you have just found this post. Everyone I know who has owned a Toshiba has had it overheat, and Toshiba also has terrible customer service. Go Dell or go home, as far as laptops are concerned.

Minority-Report-Like Human Computer Interface

This is cool, but as review sites have noted, it does have visible lag. It definitely wouldn't work for games that require quick reaction time to swivel around and bust a cap in a fool that is trying to sneak up and knife you in the back.

Shields Up

Radiation shields.

Prototype This

There is a great new show on the Discovery Channel about making kick-ass things in the spirit of what I was talking about below. It stars Joe "Kingpin" Grand, the maker of the DefCon 15 and 16 badges, among some others. Full episodes are available. Check out the main page here. Watch an episode here.

New XKCD

The newest xkcd comic below. It led me to read this, and this.

Another Example of Why Banning Security Research is Bad

This article comes from Schneier, and it is just yet another example of why banning of legitimate security research, or even condemning it, is bad. This is similar to the Dutch research team that hacked the RFID transit system cards (that were also being used for access to secure government buildings). The company who manufactured the cards tried to sue, while the Dutch courts upheld the freedom of speech and research of the students. The real problem was the flaw inherent in the system itself, and not with the announcement of the flaw. The Chinese had been cloning the cards on the black market for up to a year before the Dutch researcher even found it.

Disclaimer: The information I gave above about the situation in the Netherlands is rehashed from a presentation of that a Dutch reporter (forgot his name) who was deeply involved in the event gave at DefCon 16. No, I will not cite my source. This is a blog.

Scantrons

In honor of all my tests this week.

Message From Slackware

I love Slackware Linux for its little messages that it prints out whenever you log in over ssh or a new terminal is opened. Many times, as in this case, I will be completely absorbed in a task and will be furiously oblivious to everything around while I work. I'll log into my Slackware Linux box and a message will pop up that causes me to pause for a second, reflect, and laugh. These messages are always something clever and usually funny. Something that appeals to the inner geek. One that I remember was a very flowery rewording of several common sayings such as "It's no use crying over spilled milk." I don't remember what they all were, but it was fun figuring out which saying the rewordings corresponded to. I wish I had written them down. In this case, it completely derailed me from my task in order to write about it. Thank you to the creator of Slack (Patrick Volkerding) for thinking of such a cool idea. We need more things like that in the world that cause us to stop and smell the roses.

Here is the one I just read:

What goes up must come down. But don't expect it to come down
where you can find it. Murphy's Law applied to Newton's.

Information Spying, Cyber Warfare, and Hackers as the James Bonds of the Information Age

The romanticized images we all have of the spy from Tom Clancy novels and James Bond films is increasingly merging with the romanticized images of the Cyberpunk. The Hacker is the new James Bond, or at least the new ideas of spies have to include a little of the image of the Hacker. At least that is what the media and pop culture are moving towards, and it is a pretty cool idea, however false it may be. Movies like Die Hard 3, shows like The Wire, and novels like The Bear and the Dragon by Tom Clancy are all evidence of this trend. Articles like this one reflect the reality of this trend.

As far as the term "hacker" is concerned, however, I think that those who are a part of the culture remain true to the true meaning as society as a whole wrestles with the swirling sea of images and icons. The Hacker Ethic still refers to the culture of information sharing as means of growth for the individual and for society. It is still exists as a principle in perfect accordance with the Liberty Principle as put forth by John Stuart Mill and other libertarian minded thinkers. Figuring out how things work is a passion for us, and learning from one another gives us power and keeps as strong as a people. It leads to innovations that improve our lives, and the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself enriches our lives. To think and explore technology, systems, and physical phenomena, and to be able to do so without artificial restriction, ultimately leads to a more knowledgeable and informed public capable of a greater degree of self reliance. As society becomes more and more specialized, the seekers of knowledge will remain true to themselves in the face of a society that continually encourages more and more laziness and dependence on government along with other institutions that provide everything. Collect knowledge. Find a project. Find a passion. Go out and make something!


http://makezine.com/magazine/
http://revision3.com/
http://www.2600.com/

Intellectual Property and Copyright - An Interesting Proposed Solution from the French

This article talks about a proposition in France that may become law. It is basically a three-strikes rule for violators of copyright laws on the internet. If you are caught three times, you lose all your internet privileges for one year. My question is whether ISPs in the US would have an incentive to help enforce a law like this, were it to be put in place here. Would they want to help shrink their base of paying customers?

This line from the article is a little ridiculous, especially coming from a "conservative":

He added that the internet has become an "essential commodity" that allows people access to social services and that their removal would be "traumatic for a family."

UPDATE 11/23/2008:
The EU has struck down the French law. Article here.

The Dark Side of The Mirror

According to this New Scientist article, dark matter could have its own force for interaction with other dark matter and could give off it's own form of light that would only interact with (be visible to) other dark matter. There could be whole dark worlds in the middle of our universe with dark-life that we would just pass right through if we flew through their area. To them, we could be the dark life forms that they couldn't see. Pretty interesting.