Computers

You to can own your own 128 Bit number

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

From BoingBoing:

In effect, AACS-LA (the AACS Licensing Authority) claimed that it owned a randomly chosen 128-bit number, and that anyone who possessed or transmitted that number was breaking the law. Moreover, it claimed to own millions more random numbers — claimed that the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which criminalises telling people how to break anti-copying software, gave it exclusive dominion over its many keys.

Why should the AACS get all the fun? Princeton prof Ed Felten has come up with a great way of giving out legally protected 128-bit numbers to anyone who wants them. If he gives out 2^128 of these, then all 128-bit numbers will be owned and no one will ever be able to use a 128-bit key without breaking the law. Good times.

Mine is 42 74 BE 5D 38 BE 17 DF C1 23 86 D9 BC 61 26 1E

I now claim this number as my own, and you can’t use it to encrypt or decrypt anything!

The BoingBoing link has lots of background on the AACS kerfluffle.

Misc

Spinal Tap Reunion!

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

Spinal Tap to Reunite for Live Earth Concert

April 25, 2007

The Associated Press

Spinal Tap is back, and this time the band wants to help save the world from global warming.

The mock heavy metal group immortalized in the 1984 mockumentary, “This Is Spinal Tap,” will reunite for a performance at Wembley Stadium in London as part of the Live Earth concerts scheduled worldwide for July 7.

The original members of Spinal Tap will be there: guitarist Nigel Tufnel (played by Christopher Guest), singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer). Rob Reiner, who both directed “This Is Spinal Tap” and played the fake documentarian Marty DeBergi in the film, will also be in attendance.

And there is a 15 minute video on the site. Fun!

Life

Scariest SF Story?

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

PZ Myers has a great big long post up about an editorial by Ben Bova that references a story called The Marching Morons.

Ben Bova says this about The Marching Morons:

The most prescient — and chilling — of all the science fiction stories ever written, though, is “The Marching Morons,” by Cyril M. Kornbluth, first published in 1951. It should be required reading in every school on Earth.

PZ takes the storyline of The Marching Morons to task and throughly deconstructs it’s premise. I recommend you read his post.

I would suggest to Mr. Bova that the most prescient — and chilling — of all the science fiction stories ever written is actually If This Goes On by Robert Heinlein, first published in 1940.

In If This Goes On, we are introduced to a United States that has become a (corrupt) Theocracy. Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods (fundamentalist) preacher, was elected President. He is the last President elected as he appoints himself as the “Prophet” of the United States.

The story is about a rebellion to overthrow the theocracy.

The reason that I believe it to be one of the scariest SF stories ever written is that I feel that the United States is not far from becoming a Theocracy. And the President is doing his damnest to grab all the power he can, and the next step would be dictatorship.

More information on the story If This Goes On.

More information on the President’s grab for more and more powers.

Computers

Top 7 Things System Administrators Forget to Do

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

A useful writeup over at O’Reilly about the top 7 things that sysadmins forget to do:

  1. Forgetting to Delete a Former User’s Account
  2. Forgetting to Regularly Search for Rootkits
  3. Forgetting to Use a Trouble Ticket Tracking System
  4. Forgetting to Set Up Technical Documentation and Creating a Knowledge Base
  5. Forgetting the Risks of Flash Memory Drives
  6. Forgetting to Manage Partial Root Access
  7. Forgetting Courtesy

I’m not sure that number 5 should really be on this list, as it strikes me as more of a Security Guy responsibility and should be covered by the Security Policy (assuming you have one) but it is something to keep in mind.

Go read the detailed descriptions.

Life

Kevin Padian Explains Macroevolution

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

From over at Pharyngula comes this wonderful news:

The gang at the NCSE have put together Padian’s testimony at the Dover trial with the slides he used. You may have already read the transcript, but with the figures added it acquires a whole new dimension — it’s basically a wonderfully done primer in the basics of macroevolutionary biology. Next time some creationist tries to simper at you that he accepts microevolution, but that there’s no evidence for macroevolution and he refuses to believe it, point him at this page. It’s aimed not at scientists, but at the judges and lawyers at a trial, so it’s eminently comprehensible to any intelligent layman … and it crushes the bogus rejection of macroevolution that they are so fond of using.

This is a wonderful transcript that explains evolution. I have not made it all the way through, but I will.

I read Monkey Girl recently, and it’s very interesting to read the real court transcript of this testimony.

Thanks PZ!

Politics

Help the ACLU Find Habeus Corpus

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

The ACLU is collecting signatures for a petition they will hand to Congress on June 26th to try and get Habeas Corpus reinstated.

JOIN THE CALL TO RESTORE OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

For almost seven years, George W. Bush has repeatedly violated the Constitution and stripped away the fundamental rights that define our country. Congress and the American people have let it happen.

The time has come to restore our America.

Add your voice to the ACLU’s Campaign to Restore Our Constitutional Rights. As part of this all-out effort we are bringing together people from across the nation for a Day of Action to demand the restoration of our rights and a return to the values embodied in the Constitution.

I urge you to go fill out this petition to help restore a right that is so essential that the founding fathers wrote it into the constitution.

Religion

Why Evolution Really Bothers The Fundamentalists

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

Chris Clarke over at Creek Running North has a very long and well written article that boils down to the real reason that fundamentalists don’t like evolution:

Evolution replaces God with sex, in other words, and that’s too much for them to bear.

And the compromise path offered by scientists of Christian faiths, that God created Deep Time and set evolution in motion? That’s saying God created the world with sex, and nothing bothers the fundies more than saying God used sex to create something.