is this man jack the ripper? reuters has an article about new DNA evidence that says he is.
Archive for October, 2002
DRAGON BOAT NOV SECOND! THATS SATERDAY
stopped in at deans to use bandwith. what follows is the post i rip apart under -more-
Is technology maturing?: “Once Apple began to improve its products again, the value of old Macs began to plummet. PCs, on the other hand, seem to be becoming more durable as people are opting not to buy the fastest and most expensive Intel chip any more and are buying cheaper systems, spending their savings elsewhere).” [They're more durable becaue software isn't pushing the limits of what the machines can do. Some think of this as driver, but I wonder if it isn't a backlash to poorly designed software. Maybe folks are becoming more demanding of the ease of use their software, which could easily reduce the number of cycles a program uses.]
happy pagan ritual. i’m manning the candy at my parents, while they’re off fleamarketing. anyone know about any parties tonight?
Continue reading ‘comp aol halloween’
for fans of chicago’s former school superintendent paul vallas, here’s a nightmare of a story. vallas is school board chair in philly, where he allowed some of the worst schools to be privatized. edison schools, the private company running those schools is failing, books and equipment from them have been sold, the company briefly moved there offices in to one of the schools, and are now talking about using unpayed student labour…
after a hard day being told by people who couldn’t tell if they were breathing that your not qualified to hold up the wall, it’s good to spend afew hours (all night) trying to make windows 98 and windows xp talk to each other…M$ has broken the task down into bite sized nuggets, added set up wizards with the wrong granularity of control, made it so that shit loads of add on software you don’t want (security hazards all) have to added on the 98 box before it has all the components, finally add components from the windows xp cd to the 98 box and remember to reboot 23 times. there was also a problem with the network card not being recognized due to bios settings, and not being rammed into the slot hard enough by the user. once networking was established, we discovered that windows xp apps can’t read a music cd shared by another machine: some sort of anti pirating feature, or just a lame application design? either way infuriating. setting local networking broke AOL, which lead to more trouble shooting. i also had to change change resolutions on two moniters from 640×480 and 800×600 to 1024×760 and 1200×1600 respectively. that’s a minor gripe, but i don’t know how the hell he was able to 3/4 of a msters degree not being able to use all the screen–he couldn’t see more then one app at a time…
so much for a sense of accomplishment.
jeff economy reports that beefheart’s magic band has reformed without him, several shows and an album forthcoming. Dean saw them (with him) at one of their last shows 20 years ago, and rated it as one of the best concerts he ever saw.
fuck it. i give up.
i’ve had it with 20 pagepersonality assesments tests full of questions that any thinking person could answer any one of several ways, and which which everyone knows is bullshit. i’m tired of two week to process the application before they call you back to mack aqn apointment for interview. i[‘m tired of canceled interviews. tell me i flunked you fucking assesment up front, don’t lie to me. i’m tired of listening to interviewers ask me if i’m team player. especially because they only hire peoplewho are sheep like in their answers… i’m tired of hearing interviewers brag about knocking off early, because they only schedule the interviews before noon…mostly i’m tired of the fucking morons they do hire. based on hoops you have to jump through, you expect something other then the “not my problem” that passes for customer service.
give me a manager who knows how to fucking manage and not somefucking mba.
Continue reading ‘pat ri gnome ic’
State of the Ffej report: I’m in excruciating back pain right now and homicidally depressed. How are you?
proof this site is evil. reload the link for further confirmation.
what follows probably doesn’t interest you, but it should amuse Ben, who deserves to be amused right now–fyi i have an amusing anecdote about the the source for this post, who i believe you cited in your blog…
Curious Yellow: Internet-killing superworm
Great whitepaper on the coming “superworm” — something I’ve been predicting for a year or two — from Brandon “Freenet” Wiley. We did a panel last year at SXSW about the near-inevitability of a superworm — a worm that coordinates it actions among infected hosts and launches a massive distributed denial of service attack on any hosts it can’t infect using those it can — and the doomsday scenario ended up frightening even us. Brandon’s whitepaper explains just how such a worm — dubbed “Curious Yellow” — could operate.
Interestingly, the problem of efficiently organizing worm instances into a network which can act globally but which has reasonable coordination costs for each node is very similar to problems found in peer-to-peer networks. The particular task of the division of the task space among all of the currently active worms is very similar to the problem addressed in distributed hash tables (DHT) designs. One popular contemporary DHT design is called Chord. In Chord, each node is assigned a portion of the task space such that the space is divided evenly and randomly among all nodes. Chord has some useful properties. First, each node in the network is reachable from each other node in the network with a maximum of O(log N) intervening nodes. Additionally, each node only needs to maintain knowledge of O(log N) other nodes, thus keeping coordination costs down to a reasonable level. What this means in simple terms is that in a network of one million nodes each node only has to keep track of approximately 20 other nodes and for one node to send a message to another node in the most distant part of the network it would take at most 20 intervening nodes. Similarly, for a network of ten million nodes, each node has to keep track of approximately 23 other nodes and it will take at most 23 intervening nodes to reach from one side of the network to the other. There are advanced variants of the Chord architecture which layer additional properties on top of the guarantees provided by the basic Chord design. Anonymous Chord (Achord) adds the property that it is very difficult for any node to find out the identities of all of the other nodes in the network. This makes it more difficult for an attacker to disable the network by discovering the identities of nodes. By having worms form an Achord network, a global framework for division of the space to be attacked can be created with reasonable coordination costs.
(via Aaron Swartz)and [Boing Boing]
Got parody?: “A blog entry about a pair of scripts for `subversive’ ads parodying recent government-sponsored anti-drug ads may lead to the parodies actually getting off the ground. The Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) has established a fund for their production and distribution, which would highlight the alleged diversion of oil revenue to Islamic terrorist groups. The ads would be in the style of the current anti-drug campaign, which links casual drug use to terror in drug-producing nations.” Source: Kuro5hin.org
Unemployed … And Loving It!: “Plastic::Work::New York City: The New York Times offers an appalling account of the laid-off Wall Streeters’ funky new party culture. Funded by their generous severance packages and unemployment checks, these newly-unemployed bankers are joyously enjoying luxurious lifestyles.” Source: Plastic o lord won’t you buy me a mercedes benz, my friends all drive poerches, i must make amends…
Financial Institutions Balk at MS Licensing: “” Source: Slashdot great line about being unable to keep MS out of their computers. better about how this violates banking laws.
Robot vac = Feline Terminator: “Danny “Guestblogger” O’Brien reports on the process of owning a robot vacuum cleaner:
Still, we did our final moving cash splurge today, and bought a Roomba. And, what do you know, it’s actually pretty good: both at cleaning and removing the bejesus out of nearby cats. It backed Dyson into the corner of our living room within minutes – she kept tottering backwards for about ten yards, like she was facing the Feline Terminator.
I feel somehow safer knowing that as I sit here, surrounded by crap, writing crap, somewhere else in town my new home is being cleaned by a small beeping robot.
LinkDiscuss” Source: Boing Boing
White trash lava light wonder when Nat and Kenneth will make one, oh, no wait, they’re geeks now…
job hunting. damn. pee testing. fun.
UPDATE:
FALL PIG ROAST PICTURES! ENJOY!
Thanx again to Kenneth for putting on the Pig, and putting up with all of us, and to Nat, Tom, Eric, Tim, Neville and John for aiding and abetting, and to Jenn And Heidi for room and board. and thank you all for coming and having Fun.
Morning report: what a pig
roast it was. Not as many people as last fall, possibly due to the cold, possibly because of the loss of the lot next door, which used to handle the overflow. It was grey and overcast, about 48 degrees. The usual suspects were there, as well as the usual 150 people you’ve met and aren’t likely to ever see again. John Gibbons did yeoman duty keping the place relativelt in order, Nat flash fried turkeys, among other services. Tom handled the overnight shift. This was the firdst year iwas there off and on all, instead of coming late-ish and staying later, and i noticed (as much as one could considering the crush of people) that most of the other regulars also did a dissappearing act from time to time. Not counting those that went home drunk. I also noticed a higher incidence of frat boy shit-i overheard some guy say”are you calling me out?” and saw a few incidents almost result in punch outs. Not countig the usual jermel incidents, one of which katherine defused. Spent the day runing errands and ruminating over the pig roast. Don’t know if i’ll take a camera to one again. Should get the pix up before the weekend, and should have the links updated for the roast and the scare ware show. Will modify the current lamprey links page, with a new, more entendable design.
Thanks again to kenneth for hosting the party. Dunno how he does it, but it wasa gas!
Manana begins the job search again in earnest. Time has run out.
10:45. Cops have left-probably called by pod3. Didnt get any food, well, some grits and some totrtillas. Most of the bands layed after dark, so i didnt get any good shots of them…dean did make it down though. Chaanging batteeries, cards, and my jacket, then going back. More later.
0kay, i just woke up and it’s time to Pig Roast. I hit the hay at 8, left tom and obleo to finish the overnmite shift. I can hear them sound checking a band from where i am. Gonna try to blog thhis live. Maybe.
