that which does not kill us, makes us stranger.

node @ 2008-07-14T11:32:00

2008-07-14T05:34:22Z

Before I look at the type of the government and the name of the government, I examine how it treats people. The correct treatment of a country’s citizen is conveyed through the upholding of human rights norms. Therefore, from my perspective, any government that seeks to uphold the norms of human rights in terms of its dealing with people meets the criteria of being legal and acceptable. And likewise, if any government, whatever it calls itself, whether secular or religious, seeks to trample human rights, then that regime does not meet the criterion of being legal or acceptable in my eyes. The name of the government is not important for me: the government’s upholding of the standards of human rights is.

— Shirin Ebadi

two party system

2008-07-11T09:28:37Z

Thrush is an organization that believes the world should have a two party system: a master, and slaves.

— The Green Opal Affair

seth

2008-07-07T09:10:58Z

a serpent guard, a horus guard, and a satesh guard meet on a neutral planet.
it is a tense moment.
the serpent guard's eyes glow.
the horus guard's beak glistens.
the satesh guard's nose... drips.
ha ha ha

how did we ever go from the idea of dynabook to the reality that is vista?

2008-07-03T12:35:32Z

Today's options:

laptop with XP: not really an option soon.
laptop with Vista: it sucks.
laptop with Linux: it sucks in different ways, plus you can't get drivers! and it eats your hard drive!
laptop with OS X: it probably sucks the least, but it's not cheap nor the best hardware. plus, your mom gets to learn what exec 2>&1 is!
laptop with NetBSD: even fewer drivers than Linux.

what do you want?

2008-06-17T08:04:51Z


<annh> i'm slowly realizing that i'm going to have to hear this bizspeak again
<annh> *shudder*
<annh> once at a meeting someone told me to go make a matrix of what we'd been talking about
<annh> so i asked her what she meant. what would this document look like
<annh> and she mumbled and left
<annh> i'm glad 'matrix' isn't so popular anymore
<self> i hope i never have to deal with biz speak
<annh> it pisses me off
<annh> reminds me of sitting in meetings where they're like, let's name our product
        phoenix or poobah and i said "how about naming it "mail" or "calendar"
<annh> and they'd stare at me
<annh> you know, put that on the icon
<self> let's name it pony express!
<self> because who doesn't want a pony!
<davet> i don't
<annh> you don't want a pony?!
<davet> no
<annh> fine. i'm sending it back
<davet> i want a bag full of gold bars

how many will you watch?

2008-06-02T11:30:26Z

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/13412/30_upcoming_movie_sequels_you_didnt_know_about.html

>SHOOT THE PIRATE

2008-05-23T21:29:31Z

Trembling, you fire the heavy arquebus. You hear its loud report over the
roaring wind, yet the dark figure still approaches. The gun falls from your
nerveless hands.
   “You won’t kill me,” he says, stepping over the weapon. “Not when I am the
only protection you have from Jean Lafond.”
   Chestnut hair, tousled by the wind, frames the tanned oval of his face. Lips
curving, his eyes rake over your inadequately dressed body, the damp chemise
clinging to your legs and heaving bosom, your gleaming hair. You are intensely
aware of the strength of his hard seaworn body, of the deep sea blue of his
eyes. And then his mouth is on yours, lips parted, demanding, and you arch into
his kiss...
   He presses you against him, head bent. “But who, my dear,” he whispers into
your hair, “will protect you from me?”

[Press RETURN or ENTER to begin.]

comrade, the honor is yours

2008-05-23T12:53:27Z

typical of the mechanized routine of the machine-model state: inhuman attempts to categorize human problems.

node @ 2008-05-23T17:41:00

2008-05-23T12:41:50Z

finland: red
germany: black
egypt: white

i don't believe it

2008-05-22T14:52:06Z

you know this movie's gonna suck

2008-04-18T12:36:53Z

Over two decades ago, Earth was reduced to a pile of ashes by an aggressive race of dimension hopping aliens, the Ma'hars.

The remaining humans flew to the stars, hoping to jump start a new civilization while sporadically fighting the Ma'hars and their allies, the vicious Greys

A small dedicated group of Men and women bleed and die to preserve the fledging remnants of humanity's freedom.

This is one of those stories.

sleep deprived

2008-04-16T13:44:02Z

Two nights of working until 4am in the past five days or so. Yuck.

it's one of those days

2008-03-25T14:36:28Z


% mpg321 -v Judas\ Priest\ -\ Entire\ Discography/13\ Judas\ Priest\ -\ Ram\ It\ Down/Ram\ it\ Down.mp3

baskets

2008-03-21T14:46:38Z

Reporter: “Mr Ben M'hidi, isn't it cowardly to use your women's baskets to carry bombs, which have taken so many innocent lives?”

Larbi Ben M'hidi: “Isn't it even more cowardly to attack defenseless villages with napalm bombs that kill many thousands of times more? Obviously, planes would make things easier for us. Give us your bombers, sir, and you can have our baskets.”

— The Battle of Algiers

naturally i was speculating who that could've been

2008-02-22T12:59:07Z

... and i don't think it's right. i think it's wrong. i think the government should step in and conscript it, make cards out, fingerprint everybody, picture them and then keep it that way because this country is the only country that lets in all the refuse that they possibly can get along with the good people.

if the people of the united states had better wake up before they have their whole little kit and caboodle go down the drain. bread is a dollar and nineteen cents a loaf and the people in this this country are tired of paying for the other people that are coming in here and working. we feel sorry, we send money, we help them but we don't want any more of those aliens. period.

no insults , thx

2008-02-05T10:47:33Z


<qmail-error> hi
<qmail-error> i have an error regarding validrcptto db
<qmail-error> i created a new user via command line
<qmail-error> when i logged in
<qmail-error> when i send a local mail from another account on the same domain ... it receives it and it's ok
<qmail-error> sending is ok too
<qmail-error> but when i send a domain to that account from hotmail
<qmail-error> it can't receive it
<self> why not?
<qmail-error> when i looked at qmail-smtpd log
<qmail-error> i found that it's not in the validrcptto database
<qmail-error> i did #mkvalidrcptto
<qmail-error> which generates the valid reciepients list
<qmail-error> it don't include this account
<qmail-error> any ideas ?
<self> have you read the docs for validrcptto?
<qmail-error> yes
<qmail-error> but i don't know how to inject an account in the validrcptto database
<self> is it http://qmail.jms1.net/scripts/mkvalidrcptto.shtml ?
<qmail-error> yes
<self> it says it'll ignore users with a uid of less than 500 or greater than 65000.  what's the uid of the new user you created?
<qmail-error> 0
<self> you're an idiot
<qmail-error> no insults , thx
<qmail-error> btw
<qmail-error> all the accounts on this mailserver contains same uid and gid
<qmail-error> which is 0
<qmail-error> and all found in /var/qmail/control/validrcptto.cdb
<self> either you've hacked your mkvalidrcptto script, or you're confused about uids
<self> i'm looking at the script: http://qmail.jms1.net/scripts/mkvalidrcptto
<self> it clearly says
<self> my $uid_min = 500 ;  # ignore uid's lower than this
<self> my $uid_max = 65000 ; # ignore uid's higher than this
<self> also, qmail-local doesn't deliver to uid = 0 accounts
<qmail-error> # any numeric uid's on the system which are lower than this will be ignored
<qmail-error> # this way we don't create entries for root, bin, daemon, lp, news, uucp,
<qmail-error> # and other non-used system users.
<qmail-error> i took this from mkvalidrcptto
<self> is 0 lower than 500?
<qmail-error> yes
<qmail-error> how to change his uid ?
<T0aD> lol.
<self> did you set up this mail server?
<qmail-error> nop
<self> that explains much.
<qmail-error> i am administrating it after 4 ppl touched it
<qmail-error> so it's all ducked =/
<UQlev> qmail-error: so you might be not the last one ;)
<qmail-error> UQlev, who knows
<qmail-error> but currently
<qmail-error> i need to fix this critical situations
<qmail-error> *situation
<qmail-error> self... what do you suggest ?
<self> perhaps one of the other four people has written a wrapper script to create accounts that will add the address to the validrcptto.cdb file
<self> i suggest locating one of the earlier admins and talking to them

slaving loop

2008-01-10T10:26:59Z


<udon> holy crap, a co-worker just found one of our 3 machine mysql clusters in a slaving loop
<udon> how is that even possible?
<neuwave> what is a slaving loop?
<gp> slaves -> plantation -> sugar -> rum -> slaves ... ?
<neuwave> got it.  thanks.

how annoying

2007-12-26T14:16:36Z

I moved my work site's Zope app server to a faster box earlier this week. I noticed it had some trouble authenticating users after that — a user would login, everything would look good, but then they'd click on a link and the server would act as if they weren't logged in. I used the Live HTTP Headers extension, and set Firefox to "ask before saving" cookies, so I knew the server setting cookies properly. Strange.

The authentication cookie was named __ac, and its value was base64'd. I decided to decode its value, and much to my dismay, saw that it was in the format

username:password

in plain-text. Argh! I read the code for the authentication product (exUserFolder), and found a "secure" cookie mechanism. I remembered that I hadn't tried it out when I set up the software because I thought it required SSL or something. It doesn't. So, I simply changed the knob in Zope, and now my server was happily caching authentication data on the server and sending unique opaque cookies to the browser. The cookies even changed on each request — can't get more secure than that!

Today, I ran into another problem with the new setup. Apparently exUserFolder doesn't cache the authentication foo in the database. It caches it in memory. This means that every time I restart Zope, people are logged out. Argh!

kosher cell phones!

2007-12-26T10:39:41Z

When Larry Pinczower switches on his cellphone, the seal of a rabbinate council appears. Unable to send text messages, take photographs or connect to the Internet, his phone is a religiously approved adaptation to modernity by the ultra-Orthodox sector of Israeli life.

More than 10,000 numbers for phone sex, dating services and the like are blocked, and rabbinical overseers ensure that the lists are up to date. Calls to other kosher phones are less than 2 cents a minute, compared with 9.5 cents for normal phones. But on the Sabbath any call costs $2.44 a minute, a steep religious penalty.

— Israel's ultra-Orthodox drive a thriving kosher economy

an old german stockings ad.

2007-12-06T13:50:47Z

node @ 2007-11-05T18:08:00

2007-11-05T13:08:15Z

Why is there a Goa'uld on Flash Gordon?

scary.

2007-10-27T13:49:00Z

There are drugs that block the formation of memories temporarily. They're used during medical procedures where the patient needs to be awake. Can they be used (are they being used?) by torturers?

node @ 2007-10-19T01:57:00

2007-10-18T20:59:31Z

lasers in eyes!

2007-10-13T10:10:44Z

poster at gwu

The story.

Bonus: quiz!

just what i need

2007-09-19T09:48:56Z

I found a guide that describes how to do encrypted rsync-like backups to Amazon S3.