Thursday, February 28, 2013

for loops

I read this over at TheDailyWTF and promptly had to clean coffee off of my monitor. This has to be the greatest for loop ever written!

$i = 0;
for (;;) {
$i++;
...
if ($i >= 15) break;
}


Now go clean whatever beverage you were drinking off of your monitor, and don't blame me! I warned you!

(and for those non-coders reading, the entire thing can be replaced with for($i=0 ; $i < 15 ; $i++) { ... })

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Why I hate the TSA

Great article titled Why I hate the TSA. The people who read me might be interested to read as well.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

How to thwart TSA "security"

A couple of weeks ago, the TSA found a plastic dagger via it's virtual strip-search machines. In the picture, the dagger appears to have a four-inch blade. In the comments, several people (rightfully) take TSA to task for this find, as it is not a threat to aviation. Our point is that it is not worth the liberties and the money to find something so insignificant, but some anonymous person seemed to want an answer as to why we were not focusing on the intent of the person trying to smuggle it on. My reply exposes several "weaknesses" in TSA security, so I doubt it will get approved. But here is my basic reply (I did not save a local copy, so I don't have it word-for-word:

The intent of the person carrying this dagger is irrelevant, as it is not a threat to aviation. If he had ill intent, here are some other ways to get past security:

First, make the checkpoint itself the target. I'm not sure how much damage you could do with a 4" plastic blade, but you'd be just as big a threat to aviation there as if you managed to get it on the plane, what with hardened cockpit doors and passenger awareness and all.

Second, place the blade in the scanner's blind spot. See point one as to why, even if successful, you're still not a threat to aviation.

Third, take a pair of scissors, which are allowed, instead. Once past security, separate the blades. Now you have TWO weapons instead of one. See point one as to why this does not matter, though, and why I suspect the scissors are allowed to begin with.

Fourth, go through security and find a place inside the "secure" area to have a nice steak dinner before your flight. Pocket the steak knife before you leave the restaurant. You're still not a threat to aviation, but at least you had a nice meal before the other passengers on the flight took you down when you started trying to take over the plane with a steak knife.

Finally, fly first-class and opt for the in-flight meal. Then you can wait, in the comfort of first class, for a flight attendant to hand you a knife. Again, at least you had a nice meal (with the bonus of a comfortable seat on the plane) before the other passengers took you down.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Why are comments moderated?

I just realized that, as an advocate of free speech, I thought it might be wise to post an explanation of why comments are moderated here.

The explanation really is quite simple: spam. I moderate comments so that I can keep out the spam. If you are a human posting a comment, it will get approved. If it does not get approved, it must have appeared to be spam ;) Sure, I use a ton of anti-spam measures both on the blog and on the forum, but by requiring moderation of your first couple of comments, I add myself as the final anti-spam measure. After you've been approved twice before, your comments should be auto-approved. The restrictions on the forum are the same (two approved posts, then auto-approval kicks in), and, unfortunately, approved comments do not count towards posts and approved posts do not count towards comments. The only other difference with the forum is that off-topic posts will be moved to a more appropriate location, but will not be deleted.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Homeland

The download page for Homeland is ready! :) Or, you can still buy a copy (affiliate link) ;)

Monday, February 18, 2013

TSA abuses child in wheelchair

The following video makes me so angry that I present it without comment:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/3oPloe08a3Q&w=500]

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Privacy and open source

I just ran across an article titled "75 Top Open Source Tools for Protecting Your Privacy" that looks promising, and thought I'd point everyone over there. If nothing else, everyone should check out number one on their list, the Tor Browser. Tor is a wonderful project, which I hope to post more about later, which makes your online activity anonymous. The Tor Browser makes installing and using Tor for web browsing a snap.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Never debate a TSO

Recently, I've been debating a TSO over at the TSA Blog in various different comment threads. I took TSORon to task for some misstatements that were made regarding TSA's performance. I asked an anonymous TSA apologist for proof that the screeners on 9/11 were poorly trained and that the TSA were any better. TSORon responded saying to read sections 9.1, 9.2, and 13.5 of the 9/11 commission report. So I did, and they to not speak to this. At all. So TSORon said to read a different section. Dude, if you're gonna cite sources, cite them correctly the first time. In another thread, I pointed out that the TSA is not any better at screening, as they have an approximate 70% failure rate. TSORon again took the opportunity to fire back with false information, stating that the information was from a 2004 report about 2002 screening. True. I have never claimed otherwise. However, he claims this number is irrelevant, but refuses to acknowledge that in a Congressional report in November 2011, it was stated that, while the actual failure rate is SSI, it has changed very little over time. What does this tell us? It tells us that if we have the TSA's failure rate at any point of their existence, then we know that it is roughly the same. Since the TSA admits the 70% number was accurate at one point in time, does it not follow that, given the Nov 2011 statement, that it is still roughly the same? Not a single TSO I've debated this with has even acknowledged this statement, and the debate abruptly ends any time I bring this fact up. Wonder why?

Monday, February 11, 2013

Expanding features

As you may have noticed, I've been busily expanding features. First, you may notice in the sidebar that you can donate either via Bitcoin or PayPal. Also, I found a phpBB style that I like, so the forums are about ready to go. There's also a new Chat feature. Finally, I've also added a Links section.

I've considered adding a Wiki as well, but I'm not entirely certain how useful that would be. Feel free to suggest other features as well :)

Friday, February 8, 2013

Dark Lord Day

A friend of mine attended Dark Lord Day a few years ago and brought a bottle back for me. That was an excellent Russian Imperial Stout. This year, Dark Lord Day is April 27. Tickets sold out in about 2 minutes last year, so if you're planning to be in the Chicago area this year to attend, you'll hafta be quick. Anyone know when tickets go on sale this year?

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Mentor's Last Words

Another manifesto, this one titled The Conscience of a Hacker:



File: archives/7/p7_0x03_Hacker's Manifesto_by_The Mentor.txt
==Phrack Inc.==

Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The following was written shortly after my arrest...

/The Conscience of a Hacker//

by

+++The Mentor+++

Written on January 8, 1986
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...

Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world...

Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...

Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...

Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.

"This is it... this is where I belong..."

I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

+++The Mentor+++
_______________________________________________________________________________

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

I have been struggling to find a way to pay proper tribute to Aaron Swartz, whom I never met in his too-short life but was certainly aware of. Then I stumbled across the "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" and found it to be a better tribute than anything I could come up with. So here it is, in its entirety:

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.

That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable.

"I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal — there's nothing we can do to stop them." But there is something we can, something that's already being done: we can fight back.

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.



Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.

With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?


-- Aaron Swartz (1998-2013), July 2008, Eremo, Italy

Monday, February 4, 2013

Monthly Stats

Something I did years ago, which I think I might start doing again, is post my monthly visitor stats on the first Monday of the month. I used to use Webalizer years ago to pull the data from my raw Apache logs. I may just use data from tools already running on the blog (specifically, Google Analytics, but I believe I get better stats from the logs. Regardless, I'm skipping January because it was a partial month. I'll revisit the issue at the end of February :)

Friday, February 1, 2013

Little Brother

Just a quick note to tell everyone to read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother (affiliate link, or download for free) before the release of the the sequel, Homeland (affiliate link), on Tuesday, February 5. I think anyone reading my blog will probably enjoy this book, and I cannot wait for the sequel :)