I never used to read slashdot myself… as a quasi-geek I tended to really have distaste for anyone or any group I felt to be ‘eliteist bastards’ which goes some way to explain my irrational dislike of IRC channels and Mathsoc. However I’ve been at slashdot on and off for a while now, and it’s funny to see how it can sort of operate as a swarm and might actually make a difference.

There was this one story about a girl who had been molested or otherwise abused, survived, and wrote a book that was called katie.com by the publisher… without checking or without caring that a completely independent site was already at that domain (but nothing can exist without having a website these days, or at least sounding like they do, so apparently the .com was vital to the book’s success). Anyway, this had a negative impact on the owner of the actual site, and complained to Penguin books about it to no avail. Katie’s lawyer threatened her that it would be in her best interest to just donate the domain, or else things would get much worse… they wanted it for some online expansion of the themes in the book. This hit slashdot, which hit back, and at least according to the owner of the site, had an impact that eventually led to the end of the dispute. A good end at least, you can read about some of the fun at katie.com

Anyway, a more current event in sillydom is a kid who put a link on his blog to his school’s website, telling people to click it and hit F5 (which just refreshes the page) in an effort to hurt the server. Okay, a little spiteful, but the server just slowed down a bit by all accounts, didn’t crash, didn’t explode killing millions… didn’t install a rootkit on everyone’s computer who tried to listen to music… how does the school respond? They have him arrested and want to charge him with a felony… how appropriate.
But, the funny thing about this is that when the news hit slashdot, well, you can imagine. Well, perhaps not…. there is a term called the slashdot effect which can almost be thought of as a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, when it’s really just lots of people all seeing a link and clicking on it for their own interest. But the effect is very much the same, it tends to bring medium to smaller servers down within minutes.

So now you can imagine what happened when the link to the school was posted. The site is down, has been for a day now I’m guessing. The kid is now in jail, they can’t blame him for this one. But it’s pretty much a joke, they school has overreacted to this one to the nth degree… I did something far worse in school (which I will not relate) that resulted in a 3 day suspension. The funny thing about that one is that normally, during a suspension, all tests and other evaluations missed are assigned a zero with no chance of making it up after the suspension is over. So when I got back, with my usual sort of luck, I had missed a major CS and Finite Math test. Both teachers allowed me to complete them anyway (kinda pointless in Finite’s case since I was so terrible at the material), the CS teacher already knew about my crimes of course, but my Finite teacher actually went out of his way to find out what had happened and rebelled against the stupidness of my suspension by allowing me to write the test.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this entry anymore… I guess, never underestimate the overreactions of school officials. Oh, and also fear ever being linked on slashdot, or worse, having the swarm against you.

So it’s now 2006, and I’m destined to screw up my next few rent cheques to be sure.

Spent a fairly quiet new years eve and day with a friend, went to dinner then played games and watched movies until the crucial moment, drank some sparkling white wine a couple minutes past midnight due to my inability to get the damn plastic cork out, and continued the relaxed adventures further into the night. This morning I tried my hand at pancakes, the fancy ones that only need water, the high of the culinary art. At least I managed not to screw them up, heh.

What of new years resolutions, I was asked… I tend not to have them, it just combines a self-promise which an easily remembered date so that when you inevitably break it, you know it and it seems much worse then if some arbitrary starting point was picked. And god knows that I’ve broken all of mine, given by the evidence that I’m still alive (as one was a do-this-or-die resolution, so much for self-threats too). Anyway, let’s see if I can come up with some resolutions which I’m almost certain to break.

1. Lose mass and volume – chance of breaking: 99.99%

I’ve tried this many many many times before, in different forms, and I’m now up to wanting to lose several multiples or a normal persons weight, as I’m just that far gone. Regardless of what I think other people think of me, there is a strong desire to just improve myself. I have no real hope of becomeing attractive, but I can work to being less repulsive.

2. Catharsis – chance of breaking: 80%

I’ve played the part of the fool once more, and had become emotionally charged over someone who could never return that sentiment. After casually-planned interrogation-like questioning over quite a long time, the problem with me can’t be tracked to anything specific I can change, but some fudamental element of my being. If mind-swapping were possible I might have tried it, but even then I can’t say that would have raised my chances above the negative. To continue to hope for this is to smash myself against the rocks in what I can only describe as a pathetic fashion, so I must purge my heart of any further desire for what has shown to be impossible. I’m also willing to use a sort of induction of this problem and conclude that quite a few billion other things are also impossible. If I could manage it, I’d probably be better for it, but as the bullet of this entry indicates, my resolve has never been very high.

Further, I should never pursue a girl who’s name ends in ‘a’, I’ve noticed a pattern. Yes, it makes perfect sense. As much sense as a robotic car freaking out when it looses sight of the grass, or a rock that keeps tigers away

3. Finish a project – chance of breaking: 50%

I’ve had a number of little side projects over the years, games and such, and I never seem to finish any of them. So to round off this list to three, I’ll resolve to continue working on at least one of them. Asylum is nearly dropped again, should pick it up again dang nammit.

By 2007, I’m sure I will have gained 50 pounds, have had my heart smashed out again, and created and dropped a number of projects.

Oh, I guess that should be a fourth one then

4. Be more optimistic – chance of breaking: 0%

There, that’s my optimism for the year.

So Christmas has passed, new year is almost upon us. So I thought I should file a new post before that happens.

Christmas itself was fine, though the surprise of my ‘big gift’ was less that intense… since I had already discussed with my mother the need for a new TV, and when I got home on the 23rd there was a big box by the tree, so big that they didn’t bother wrapping it and just put a festive cloth of some sort over it, not quite covering the bottom where the box described it’s various input ports. It’s a nice big TV, I can’t remember the inches, but it’s huge compared to the old one, and it’s flatscreen… that is, the screen is flat, but it’s not the ones that are only an inch deep, no, this thing has a hell of a rear end, and, unfortunately, weighs quite a lot. It would be easier to just build the next place I’ll live around it rather than moving out.

On the 24th, went to the family gathering which is tradition, and met some new people, which was odd for a family gathering. Well, it was a relation of mine, and some of her friends who came along. I felt supremely out of place, especially since my brother didn’t come, and our side of the family is a bit out of sync with them, as everyone is either 15 years older or 10 years younger. Well, I was at least able to have conversations with the younger people, got to hear about lots of relationship troubles, some of which quite shocking (for lil ol’ Victorian me), including of course that people there, at 15, had gone through four relationships, versus me with my goose egg, alas. And also had one of the little-boy teens try to bounce things off my gut, so all in all it was up to par with my usual interactions.

In terms of my gifts for others, they were fairly feeble, I never know what anyone wants. The only significant thing I got was a necklace for one of my friends, a nice Amethyst stone in a square gold mount with little diamonds in a row on the bottom, on a white gold chain. I know there is at least (and probably, at most) one other person who very occasionally reads this non-journal who understands the significance of it, or rather the parallels between past and present, which are certainly but regrettably parallel.

I was home home on boxing day, but my home is now in Toronto, and I was shocked at what happened. Jane Creba was one of many people hit by stray bullets as gangs tried to kill each other, and of course, the only person who died was her, the 15 year old girl. She’s dead, and it doesn’t make me want to believe in heaven for her, but it certainly makes me want to believe in hell for those who did this. Which is probably the only justice they would ever have faced, since I doubt the police will catch them, this city is increasingly bathing in blood. Sure, it’s not as bad as a city in the states, but should we be complaisant just because we haven’t descended to the lowest circle of hell? At least she wasn’t the target, so it’s a matter of being in the wrong trajectory at the wrong time, and not another example of misogyny.

Now I’m depressed, so that’s all for now. I’ll put some new years resolutions here once I’ve thought of any, it’s hard when you’re perfect.
“Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce”

So it’s close to Christmas, and has actually passed the one year anniversary of this site. Neat. Well, my site has existed in one form or another for years, starting from a geocities account many many moons ago (back when the only requirement was putting a little geocities mention at the bottom of your page and you got a metric meg to work with, so you can tell this was indeed a very very long time ago) then moved to Xoom until just before they died, then to Marcade’s server when this page was vaguely QB related, then when that got sold off, I decided it was about time for me to buy my own space, which I did a year ago.

So has anything changed since then? No.

Well, graduated university and got a job and now live in a big city, but somehow these don’t seem like big events. Again, they are by which a life can occur, the actual life is still elusive. Alas. Actually, been going through a rough emotional time recently, things have been quite difficult, but as this is my Not-Journal, I’ll distinguish it by not going into any more detail, snap.

I’ll be going home tonight for the holidays, and then I’ll be back for the three days (28, 29, 30) for more fun work while virtually everyone is on vacation. I decided to save mine up for a rainy week. Then got new years when I can reflect on the utter non-advancement of life, ever growing mass, and other funnities. Yes, a word I just made up, but I’ll use it.

Only two shopping days left, I wonder if I should start looking for stuff.

Haven’t updated in a while, haven’t been working on Asylum much either, just little bits here and there. I’m not even sure what I’ve been doing instead… haven’t played any games for a while (PS2 was such a waste of money, heh), but I also can’t sleep very well… I just sort of have been existing with no real product for it.

Anyway, my latest escapade has been with a mice.. never had a problem with them personally back home, in the woods… but here in toronto, in an apartment, I apparently can’t resist them. About a month ago I killed one trying to trap it in a chip bag it had wondered into in my bedroom… I lightly tossed a plate to cut off it’s escape, and walloped it with the plate in the bag… at least cleanup was easy.

But last weekend I discovered that at least two more mice were in residence behind the fridge, and as they are field mice, move at 0.97c. I figure they got in from the hallway since my front door has about an inch of clearence. Anyway, finally found traps at my local convenience store. Round one was last night.

I lost… I lost versus the mice. See, I bought glue-based traps, put some cheese in them and left them around where they like coming out (unfortunately, my kitchen counter). This morning I found one moved quite far from it’s original position, with some marks in the glue, and a few of their lovely diseased pellets in it. Meaning one got stuck, and got unstuck, sometime in the night. Damn, now it will be wise to me.

I left the traps out again while I was at work, they weren’t disturbed… I think I lost the round.

Round two will be tonight, I decided that the humane trap wasn’t going to work, so I bought some snap decapitating ones. I was only able to arm one, the other just kept going off trying to take off my finger. Anyway, maybe it will fall for it, but after narrowly escaping from another oddly placed bit of cheese in the open, I think I’ve lost that important weaponry of surprise.

I don’t want to kill the mice, but if they refuse to get trapped in the humane traps, then I want them out of my kitchen more than I want to wait. I don’t even know how they are alive, there’s nothing to eat around here.

Bringing me to the other thing going on… I’ve gone on a diet, er, food reduced I guess, I’ve made it up. Trying to stay around 500 calories a day, it’s been quite difficult actually, and I’ve violated it a few times. My hopes were never high, but I figure I’ve got to do something. So I tend just to eat soup…. so what are the mice eating? Can they work the can opener?

I’ve read this article a few times now, and it’s hilarious, and unfortunately true. It’s off an MS blog written by one Larry Osterman. The link to the article is here but I’ll post the full text just in case the source vanishes or something, this post should live on. Every time I read it I’m reminded of Deep Thoughts and the Reindeer Effect, no one knows what it is, but it would be fun to say “Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the Reindeer Effect”. Not an exact quote, but from memory, anyway, on with the Dancing Bunny Problem:

———————————–

Beware of the dancing bunnies.

I saw a post the other day (I’m not sure where, otherwise I’d cite it) that proclaimed that a properly designed system didn’t need any anti-virus or anti-spyware software.

Forgive me, but this comment is about as intellegent as “I can see a worldwide market for 10 computers” or “no properly written program should require more than 128K of RAM” or “no properly designed computer should require a fan”.

The reason for this is buried in the subject of this post, it’s what I (and others) like to call the “dancing bunnies” problem.

What’s the dancing bunnies problem?

It’s a description of what happens when a user receives an email message that says “click here to see the dancing bunnies”.

The user wants to see the dancing bunnies, so they click there. It doesn’t matter how much you try to disuade them, if they want to see the dancing bunnies, then by gum, they’re going to see the dancing bunnies. It doesn’t matter how many technical hurdles you put in their way, if they stop the user from seeing the dancing bunny, then they’re going to go and see the dancing bunny.

There are lots of techniques for mitigating the dancing bunny problem. There’s strict privilege separation – users don’t have access to any locations that can harm them. You can prevent users from downloading programs. You can make the user invoke magic commands to make code executable (chmod +e dancingbunnies). You can force the user to input a password when they want to access resources. You can block programs at the firewall. You can turn off scripting. You can do lots, and lots of things.

However, at the end of the day, the user still wants to see the dancing bunny, and they’ll do whatever’s necessary to bypass your carefully constructed barriers in order to see the bunny

We know that user’s will do whatever’s necessary. How do we know that? Well, because at least one virus (one of the Beagle derivatives) propogated via a password encrypted .zip file. In order to see the contents, the user had to open the zip file and type in the password that was contained in the email. Users were more than happy to do that, even after years of education, and dozens of technological hurdles.

All because they wanted to see the dancing bunny.

The reason for a platform needing anti-virus and anti-spyware software is that it forms a final line of defense against the dancing bunny problem – at their heart, anti-virus software is software that scans every executable before it’s loaded and prevents it from running if it looks like it contain a virus.

As long as the user can run code or scripts, then viruses will exist, and anti-virus software will need to exist to protect users from them.

Written by Larry Osterman

I had a yearning for it, a strong desire… I even had a dream about it. And I finally did it. I bought a PS2.

I’ve always tended to ride a little on the late side of the technology wave, PS3 will be out soon, but I don’t care, new games will make me want to spend lots of money, while old games are cheaper and I already know something about them. But still, this thing wasn’t cheap.

The playstation alone was over 150, and I also bought a dual shock controller because I didn’t think the system came with any controllers at all (Futureshop had a helpful sticker to confuse this fact), and I bought memory cards which I could only seem to purchase in units of two at collosal expense. And to top it all off, they didn’t even have the games I wanted.

I was putting everything back when I remembered a little store on Yonge that was basically a new and used game store, Curtis and I were in there once, surely they’d have stuff. So I bought the damn unit (and accessories) anyway, put it in my backpack, and went to that other store.

There I was able to pick up Amplitude and We (heart) Katamari, I wanted the original Katamari Damacy as well, but they didn’t have it. It was still enough spending for one night. Nearly oblivious to the amount of money I’d just pissed away, I brought it all home.

I set the sucker up, fired up Amplitude, and beat mellow (with some difficulty, god I suck)

Chris found a few bugs in the first release, and while I fixed them I made number of changes. A couple of the most notable ones are a change to using ListView’s so you can sort the window and process entries, and a rudementary “ProcessWatcher” so that as windows and processes are started and ended the windows update automagically, but it’s not perfect (and not really completely tested, heh)

Anyway, here it is again:
files section
Timed Shut Down executable
shot 1 shot 2 shot 3