Script to disable the OOM killer on certain processes
 by in Computers & Hardware, HOWTOs, Software |
My LinuxSampler set-up was having odd crashes lately. Took a while to figure to they were caused by the OOM killer killing the process. (Granted, not weird if you only have 256MB of RAM…)
Quite annoying, I do not want that process to die (nor the “jackd” process).
After having stumbled upon this page about the OOM [...]
That’s Microsoft, allright…
| by in Belegana, Conspiracies, Interesting Links, Internet & Technology, Media, Religion & Politics, Random Rantings |
Sickening stuff: How to Get Your Platform Accepted as a Standard – Microsoft Style
Next time somebody believes your usage of the dollar sign when typing “MS” is childish, re-direct those people to that article….
‘Nuff said…
Sean, have you read this?
| by in Belegana, Random Rantings, Sad Stuff |
Soylent Green is coming.
Ouch, McKinnon extradition emminent…
Who the fuck were they trying to kid anyway — trying to prevent the USA from getting their scapegoat: Gary McKinnon is to be extradited to US.
If he is prevented from committing suicide, and if he’s technically any good, he is most probably going to end up working for the US army.
Either way, good [...]
The Art Of Noise feat. RAKIM
| by in Arts & Poetry, Interesting Links, Music |
Wow, under what stone have I been living?
As a young kid I bought almost all the Art Of Noise’s music. Likewise, Rakim (of Eric B and Rakim fame) has been an inspiration as well…
And I only just now discovered they once did a collaboration together… Sweet!
NVIDIA nvagp/agpgart module woes…
| by in Computers & Hardware, HOWTOs, Software |
So I was trying to optimise a laptop for audio playback and wanted the NVIDIA driver to use the its own NvAGP rather than the linux supplied ‘agpgart’ module. The reason being that the performance may be better, and I have this obsession with optimisation…
This wasn’t as easy as it seemed as for [...]
NG-BASIC is moving!
| by in General, Interesting Links, Software |
Hi there people!
Interesting times ahead for my pet project NG-BASIC!
After long deliberation I have decided to transfer the ownership; transfer the ownership to a new owner that is going to breathe fresh life into the project.
It shall be actively developed on — something which I can’t do anymore as I seem to be [...]
Paris — Don’t Stop The Movement
| by in General |
I just caught this on guerrillafunk.com:
So, it wasn’t the caffeine after all…
| by in Health, Interesting Links |
For most of my (working) life, I have been an avid coffee-drinker almost since the day I first forced that cup down my throat out of politeness and, after a few cups thought that, “Hey that actually tastes & feels good.“.
Until, a few of months ago, my stomach started acting up on me after drinking [...]
In-between-jobs…
| by in General |
“In between jobs“, I always have wanted to say that. I wish I could say it in another situation though…
Last month my employer went bankrupt and me and some colleagues haven’t been payed for a couple of months.
It sucks…. There’s the issue of some back-pay that I still have to get back which comes with [...]
MC Frontalot — Secrets From The Future
| by in Arts & Poetry, Conspiracies, Freedom & Repression, Interesting Links, Internet & Technology, Media, Religion & Politics, Music, Security & Privacy |
Hey again! Long time no post, I know…. busy, life, et cetera, but this I just needed to share.
I was just reading Bruce Schneier’s CRYPTO-GRAM and he linked to this suprisingly good track (direct link to MP3) by MC Frontalot, called Secrets From The Future (direct link to the lyrics).
To quote the chorus:
You can’t [...]
Everlast: Love War and The Ghost of Whitey Ford
| by in Arts & Poetry, Interesting Links, Music |
It’s been quiet for a long while … probably because I didn’t have anything to say or anything to vent… But I do so, now.
See, my girlfriend found the new site set up by Everlast (to spread the word about his new album, Love War and The Ghost of Whitey Ford, I assume) [...]
Woohoo!
| by in General |
Recently, my MythTV box started acting ‘weird’ … initially I thought I just got a flaky SVN checkout, even after I installed a more recent version.
It was only after the machine really crashed, and one of the two encoder cards didn’t want to initialise resulting in only static coming from the card. That sucked, so [...]
I’m a freak: I got calculi in my salivary glands
| by in Health, Interesting Links |
I have got calculi in my salivary glands and it sometimes acts up.
You know, if you had biology in school, there are 2 tiny little holes on the floor of your mouth, about where your tongue attaches, where your saliva comes into your mouth.
Basically, what happens is that sometimes — and this is [...]
New server!
| by in General |
One man’s trash is another man’s new server.
I love to recycle. I got a ‘new’ server from a buddy of mine, which performs better than the older one. So the web- and database- stuff have just been migrated to the other machine and things seem to work OK.
You may noticed if you have been here [...]
I’m chillin’….
With this Transformer movie coming out… it reminded me of this song I still have the vinyl to. I didn’t even know it had a video (check here, embedding is disabled for that video), then again, back then we didn’t even have cable..
I still cannot make out whether it is a sample from the actual [...]
I bought a new camera: Kodak Z710
| by in General |
Last week, me and the girlfriend were on the lookout for a relatively cheap Bluetooth headset to buy for my birthday; so while looking around the various stores that sell electronics, we both noticed some quite nice digital camera’s being on the shelves nowadays.
That was Tuesday last week … but the image of the [...]
Nice kit…
With the current iPhone hype it’s cool to see an open device like the Neo1973. There’s even an edition that includes a special screwdriver so you can really take that to the literal level.
“Know that it’s okay to call shit like it is and quit being cowards worrying about who we’ll offend”
| by in Interesting Links |
I just finished reading an article on guerrillafunk.com by Paris entitled “Are you a Hip-Hop apologist?”.
You screwed around as a teen, now why can’t your kids?
Couldn’t help but notice the ‘hype’ surrounding the article entitled ‘You Grew Up Playing Shoot’em-Up Games. Why Can’t Your Kids?…. Although the title of that article may sound grown-up and wise, personally, I think it’s a bullshit wise-crack because I seriously doubt it has anything to do at all with computer games at all.
You [...]
The Inuit and Christianity
I was watching a TV recording last night, in it they showed an old news-reel of Inuit celebrating Easter. I was immediately like “WTF” — Christian beliefs, way over there? I couldn’t believe it. Because I wouldn’t think Christians would’ve their balls frozen off trying to convert those folks. And second, because I would’ve thought [...]
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
A colleague and friend of mine whose name I won’t mention to protect the innocent, told me some stories about Sea Shepherd, an organisation whose mission statement it is to protect and conserve marine wild-life — and does this very actively by basically stalking and irritating the hell out of whale-hunters, et cetera.
A couple [...]
I hate cripple-ware!
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have now got an Apple MacBook Pro to work on, which obviously has its pros and cons. Sure, the machine supports X11 to a certain extent but I don’t want to basically run 2 different window managers that look and act a bit differently. I have been [...]
LMAO! Minister must explain how a guy, with Joker-style make-up job, got a passport an ID-card
My girlfriend just called me about this hilarious bit about a guy that had gotten a passport with his picture made while he looked like The Joker from the Batman series.
Apparently, after stating that ‘this was his way of life’, the municipal office didn’t see no problem with it, and issued a passport an ID-card.
This [...]
Yay I got a new Mac!
| by in Computers & Hardware, General |
First post from my new Mac!
Stranger things have happened: a proprietary operating system has entered my household once again. I didn’t pay for it, mind you, my boss did.
*sniff* It may be some weird fetish, but the smell of new hardware is just… well… there is just something about it..
So I’m all happy discovering [...]
myth_system(): Error, fork() failed because Cannot allocate memory
| by in Computers & Hardware, General |
Something tells me I need some more memory in my MythTV machine — it was happily transcoding earlier recorded programmes when suddenly all queued transcoding jobs seemed to fail. Checking the backend’s logfile I noticed a lot of these errors:
myth_system(): Error, fork() failed because Cannot allocate memory
There’s 512MB in it at the moment — and [...]
Linux distro timeline
I just discovered the linux distribution timeline.
Cool graph…
The ‘joys’ of computerisation…
Things can go wrong — about 800.000 times.
Forgive my sarcasm, but wasn’t making this type of stuff illegal supposed to cure all of this? *very deep sigh*
The ‘industry’ really should stop lobbying to criminalise crackers and direct their ammo at the ones that are really responsible: the companies that allow for these type of fraud [...]
Online treatment for alcoholism
I just caught this news (Dutch) about on-line treatment for alcohol-addiction by some Dutch clinic that specialises in that type of thing.
This ‘treatment’ consists of 7 online chat-sessions with a professional.
Now, I can’t get this image out of my head:
i have a drinking problem
Come, come, elucidate your thoughts.
i drink too much
I’m not sure I understand [...]
Cute…
Cute.. I quote:
Players and creators of video games could face imprisonment for acts of virtual violence under draft legislation being drawn up by two of Germany’s state governments.
It could’ve been an article on The Onion but sadly — it ain’t no joke. ‘Der’ Man wants to illegalise in-game violence thinking that it will prevent kids [...]
Picture of Blair is not offensive…
| by in General |
Well, the one with a barcode on his upper lip isn’t:
I just caught this article on the Register about an ASA complaint about a Guardian advertisement against the usage of ID cards. This one:
The Register article states that, apparently, the ..
NO2ID made clear they had worked hard to make Blair look like Hitler.
Worked hard [...]
To sit upright or to not sit upright…
| by in Health, Interesting Links |
In my profession, I have always sat behind a computer — I have never done any work that didn’t involve one.
People always noted my sitting position: I was either hanging backwards in my chair (hey the monitor is at eye-height then, too), or I’m sitting behind a desk at a slight angle (i.e. my [...]
I guess the truth really, really is inconvenient…
I have just caught this article here and it sickens me how, the ‘free world that the terrorist envy‘, is all run by money. I just hope some of the parents are wise enough to teach their kids, though… I mean, yeah, they’re American, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all morons, even a retard [...]
NG-BASIC 0.2.16, as Firefox-extension
| by in General |
Recently I was browsing through this sites’ statistics and noticed a link from this fellow who discovered my basic interpreter-project after reading the Salon article ‘Why Johnny Can’t Code‘. An article that, by the way, makes a very solid point.
So that, combined with realising that I haven’t done anything with my BASIC interpreter for almost [...]
Force feedback: did I see prior art in `The Incredible Hulk’?
I don’t know where exactly that I read it, but some time the previous year I read this bit about a boat that sunk, in the 1960’s or 70’s, and that it was recovered by transferring ping-pong balls into it. Yeah, it made me think of the Discovery programma MythBusters as well, but it seems [...]
Hot-linking not allowed..
| by in General, Random Rantings |
As I noticed a lot of the bandwidth of this website is going to ‘waste’ because some people like to use images stored on this server in their signatures or posts on other forums, I tinkered around a bit with PHP and Apache’s Rewrite Engine and cooked up a configuration that ought to reduce this [...]
So I just voted….
| by in General |
In the Netherlands it is ‘that’ time again to do our ‘duty’: we have to elect the lesser of all evils today.
As the comedian who commented on the so-called ‘debate’ that was televised last-night said, I made a tactical vote today: I went to the voting station between 10 and 11 am, so it wasn’t [...]
On the anti-smoking lobby and so-called ‘experts’
| by in Health, Interesting Links, Random Rantings |
I’m an person avidly against the anti-smoking lobby. It’s unfair.
I’ve always defended the position of the smoker, and have always doubted research into this field because, hell, cancer could just as well come from another source, not specifically second-hand smoke (it could be farts, or fuck, this is one of my latest gems: cancer could [...]
White-supremacist butt-fuckers messing wit’ MLK…
I just love this initiative to Googlebomb a white-supremacist website (found it while connecting*the*dots).
The content of the site really is sickening and vile. Of course, such a site should be taken down, but denial of service attacks are childish. And, everybody has a right to express themselves, even a white supremacist.
But… this isn’t expression… [...]
Oooooh a student got abused and tazed by police — so now what?
I just caught this sick shit through The Register…. Guy gets tazed by cops because he couldn’t show an ID card.
“Stand up or you will get tazed again?”
What the frigging fuck? Of course, everybody says it’s a bad thing. Sure, I’m not saying that it isn’t….
But, I don’t know what upsets me more here. The [...]
The dark nature of capitalism…
| by in Belegana, Random Rantings |
I couldn’t resist to use the same title for this post as the one I recently read on connecting*the*dots — because, hey, the following is also the dark nature of capitalism…
This morning, there was some news on TV (can’t help it — my girlfriend always turns the damn thing on in the morning), that earlier [...]
Forget the PS3 ! I want a Nedap voting machine
| by in Humour, Interesting Links |
It can play games too! I was just reading this relatively old dissection of these voting machines that coincidentally we will vote on in the upcoming elections.
It started with what we thought was a very obvious statement. We claimed on our website that
the Nedap was just another computer, and that as such it could just [...]
Hmmmmm — cookies!
| by in General |
As I mentioned last month — working from home has its pros and cons.
I recently discovered a new ‘pro‘: it allows me to experiment with making food. Of course, I got a sweet tooth, so at the moment I’m only making things like candy and pastry.
It all started with a couple of cookies that [...]
The lie detector and Wonder Woman…
| by in History, Interesting Links |
I learned some interesting facts this morning. Through this post on Slashdot I ended up on this page, on the release of the guys’ FBI files.
I didn’t know the creator of the first ‘lie detector’ and Wonder Woman were one and the same guy. And that, in 1938, William Moulton Marston once did some tests [...]
Recording an end-user’s movements on a website — copyright infringement?
This post on Slashdot got me thinking of something that I’ve been thinking about a couple of years ago.
Who says that websites aren’t already recording your movements?
I mean — earlier in this century I was thinking that, when you are a big corporation, and you have some ‘comments, complaints & suggestions‘ section on [...]
It’s 2006 and this world still stinks…
Last night I had a hard time getting asleep and couldn’t resist thinking about the sorry sick state our world is in, the way that it is getting spinned out of control caused mainly by the corruption-prone mechanics of politics and economics.
About how megalomanic people are put in powerful positions and how they, slowly and [...]
How hard can it be to get the frigging time correct?
| by in General |
Last night I was thinking how insane it is that Windows has to ask the user whether the new time-settings (due to daylight savings) are correct — knowing that I don’t have to worry about any of that on my machines at all…..
Today, I incidentally discovered this old news that I didn’t catch before. [...]
Oops, I did it again….
| by in General |
Hmm — two quotes of the week posts one after the other… One would think I’ve got better, or other, things to do lately, than to sit behind a computer and rant about whatever… Yeah: I’m sitting behind a computer, coding (for both work and my private stuff)..
I always have these, well ‘intense’ sessions [...]
And — it’s back…
| by in General |
The site was off-line just now (only for a few minutes though), due to some necessary software upgrades. The thing might even perform a little better now…
OM-MF-G
Just discovered this here (by following a link, by the way, in one of the comments below this other amazing story):
He noticed an alphanumeric code printed on the key [of the Diebold voting machine], and remarked that he had a key at home with the same code on it. The next day he brought in [...]
VoIP (SIP), XS4ALL and Asterisk
My ISP (XS4ALL) is currently providing its clients with 1 or 2 optional VoIP numbers. I would’ve never imagined I would be setting VoIP up at home, but the mythical convergence box in my living room has VoIP capabilities — so why the hell not? (Why does a dog lick its balls?)
As VoIP calls are [...]
Bettie Serveert 15 year anniversary
| by in Arts & Poetry, Interesting Links, Music |
I just received an email from Fabchannel that they’re webcasting the 15 year anniversary concert of Bettie Serveert (Dutch band). I’m a long fan of Bettie Serveert — `Brain-Tag‘ in fact being my and my gf’s ‘song‘ (that’s some excellent guitar-playing).
But damn, my browser does not support Flash (well not the latest version anyways) and [...]
MythTV + MythStreams + lastFMProxy = fun too :)
Yesterday, one of my new colleagues pointed my attention to last.FM, an internet radio station. Well, there are plenty internet radio stations, but what sets this one apart from the rest is the fact that you can specify what songs you like, so that some kind of profile is created. I had already heard of [...]
Quote Of The Week #25
| by in General, Quote Of The Week |
Aesopus (or Aesop / Æsop), the ancient Greek writer, famous for his fables, has said many wise things therein. One of these is this weeks’ quote, coming from the short Bundle of Sticks:
Union gives strength.
Quote Of The Week, QOTW
Ordered a new system for my MythTV set-up
| by in Computers & Hardware, General |
I recently ordered a new system to upgrade my MythTV setup. Currently, the back-end (i.e. the machine doing all the recording) is an IBM 300GL. Yeah it’s almost antique, I know, but it works. The drawback is that the hard-drive it records on, is actually an NFS mounted drive that physically resides in another system.
The [...]
T minus 7 days and counting…
| by in General, The Netherlands |
Yeh well, as I said earlier this month, a certain Monday would be an interesting one. Never gotten around to an actual update on that, but, well, now I am.
Anyways, that particular Monday on the 24th of July was the day I gave my current employer my notice.
I quit that job because, well, I [...]
Studying Latin..
| by in General, History, Interesting Links |
“Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur”
Over the recent years I’m having this increasing interest in history and the evolution of human knowledge, so to speak. The ancient Greek philosophers of course and stuff like etymology for instance quite interest me. It’s funny to see how words have evolved in different languages, coming from the same [...]
Analysis: Murder in the skies…
The Register runs a nice article analysis on the ‘foiled’ plane-bomb plan:
We’re told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner – all easily [...]
Sentiment…
| by in History, Interesting Links, Music |
When I was young I had this remix tape with Electro music on it. Lately, I tried searching for a couple of the songs on that tape. That once pointed me to this remix with a lot of old-school electro songs in it. (Incidentally, you might find the N.W.A. track Panic Zone quite funny to [...]
Firefox crop circle
| by in Interesting Links |
I just discovered this gallery of a Linux User Group creating crop-circles of the Firefox logo:
Pretty neat trick.
Firefox, Linux, Crop Circles
Quote Of The Week #22
For this 22nd Quote Of The Week, we’ll focus on Emiliano Zapata, who once said (or rather, wrote, in a letter to Pancho Villa):
Ignorance and obscurantism have never produced anything other than flocks of slaves for tyranny.
Quote Of The Week, QOTW
OMFG this is amazing
| by in Animals & Nature, Bunnies, Interesting Links |
Yesterday I discovered these two posts on CuteOverload: a real life Bambi and Thumper.
Amazing…
Animals, Bambi, Thumper, Rabbits, Deer
Criminal hackers…
| by in General |
Last week I was watching some quiz on Belgian TV and I noticed that, for once, they were actually using the correct term to describe a criminal hacker, i.e. a cracker:
If you use MythTV to filter out the crap, television might even be worth watching…
I thought that was cool, because many of us dislike the [...]
Dutch population-growth is slow this year
The Central Bureau of Statistics (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, CBS) reports that the Dutch population has barely grown: the last 6 months there was a mere increase of only 2.000 people, as opposed to 7.000 people in the same period, in the previous year.
Interestingly, the second quarter of 2006 only seen a decrease of [...]
Chomsky on Israel, Lebanon and Palestine…
After just reading a piece on morality, I incidentally discovered this Chomsky-interview published in the Middle East Online, in which he is asked whether the current actions by Israel are legally and morally justified…
The invasion itself is a serious breach of international law, and major war crimes are being committed as it proceeds. There is [...]
Why policing the police will be impossible…
| by in Interesting Links |
The already ongoing threat of video-surveillance being used against the public, rather than to serve it, is a very serious one.
People have said that, especially with an increase of (listening) camera’s in suburban areas, there’s all the more reason to keep the same ‘tabs’ on the police and the state: Watch Big Brother.
And because [...]
Web2DNA: Convert your website to a ‘DNA-like’ image.
| by in Arts & Poetry, Humour, Interesting Links, Software |
Through Sean’s site, I discovered this neat thingy that converts your websites’ HTML to a DNA-like sequence:
WEB2DNA will take you website, analyze it, crunch it to little bits and spit it out as a graphic representation of a human DNA.
The brightness of the lines is determined by the importance of the tags in terms of [...]
The Mythical Convergence Box
So, a Slashdot-post links to this article on the mythical convergence TV / PC that seems just that: a myth.
Obviously, the guy has never learned about MythTV: I got a PC running that in my living room — and it works like a charm.
The technology is already there, and peope are ready for it [...]
Give up your PIN-code to some criminal holding you at gun-point?
| by in Belegana, Freedom & Repression, Health, Ideas & Concepts, Media, Religion & Politics, Random Rantings, Security & Privacy, The Netherlands, Visions |
Well, go to jail already! In the Netherlands, the police will label anybody that hands over their PIN-code, as a ’suspect of a criminal act’. Of course, there are things to be said against, and pro…. But, of course, I’m more leaning towards against: I didn’t fucking ask for a fucking banking-card that is protected [...]
The irony: Windows broken before shipped…
| by in Conspiracies, Freedom & Repression, Humour, Interesting Links, Music Industry & DRM, Random Rantings, Security & Privacy |
So, while a Microsoft spokesman was trying to relay its wet-dream to listeners (i.e. was intellectually masturbating) on the security in Window Vista, a Polish female researcher was demonstrating how the ’security’ can be bypassed, thus resulting in exactly the same unsafe situation as with earlier Windows variants.
Real funny, that.
Safe computing is impossible if the [...]
Amarok: Re-discover your music
Introduction
Yesterday I was upgrading the KDE and noticed the media player ‘Amarok‘. I did look at this a long time ago but forgot all about it. Actually, when I saw the package I initially mistook it for the Amusing Mis-use Of Resources….
Amarok’s main screen while playing media; the right panel showing the playlist and [...]
BlackHat conference demoes US citizen-only targetting smart-bomb, triggered by RFID chip on their passport
| by in Freedom & Repression, Interesting Links, Media, Religion & Politics, Random Rantings, Security & Privacy |
Just read that, at the BlackHat conference in Las Vegas, some folks demoed a bomb that will explode if an American passport is in its vicinity — a scenario not that hard to imagine.
Basically, RFID passports do not guarantee the safety and security they were invented for in the first place.
Now, I am not [...]
WordPress 2.0.4 security release available
If you haven’t already — please upgrade WordPress to version 2.0.4. According to the developers, over 50 bugs have been fixed and the issue with the ‘Anyone can register‘-thing has now been addressed.
Spread the Word, Press..
WordPress, Blogs, Vulnerability, Security
Engineering students to investigate whether the US gov’t themselves blew up the WTC
According to this article (Dutch), eight students of the TU Delft (Technical University in Delft) are going to investigate whether the US government blew up the World Trade Center in the 9/11 attacks.
Simply because the official answers to all the questions don’t seem to hold water. It has to be noted that the research shall [...]
Sysadmin Appreciation Day!
From sysadminday.com:
If you can read this, thank your sysadmin.
A sysadmin unpacked the server for this website from its box, installed an operating system, patched it for security, made sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitored it for stability, set up the software, and kept backups in case anything went [...]
OMFG!
Holy sh.., err, war!
Disproportionate death tolls indeed…
War, Iraq, Deaths
What really happened…. ?
Whatreallyhappened.com reports that, apparently it has been reported that the two Israeli soldiers were caught on Lebanon territory, as opposed to the Israeli statement that they have been captured in Israel…
Truth, Propaganda, War, Middle East
Nukes and Peace
| by in Interesting Links, Sad Stuff |
I just discovered this image through Sean Coon’s site.
Brilliant..
Writing in water!
| by in Interesting Links, Space & Beyond |
Researchers have discovered a way to write characters in water using waves.
Pretty amazing stuff.
WordPress users: Disable ‘Anyone can register‘!
Through Darknet I discovered that apparently a vulnerability has been found in WordPress that could allow evil people to do nasty stuff. Details remain vague though, but according to Dr Dave, one should disable the Anyone can register thingy in the Options of their weblog to prevent the vulnerability being exploited.
The details are kept vague [...]
Judge says teen doesn’t have to undergo chemo treatment (for now…)
In an interesting case in the US, AP reports about a judge concluding that a certain 16 year old kid (wanting alternative treatment) should not be forced to undergo chemo-treatment.
It sure as hell would be pretty insane if one cannot decide what’s to happen to ones own body. Isn’t that a persons’ own choice, just [...]
Blow-up doll for insecure female drivers
So some company is marketing a blow-up doll for women who are insecure about driving at night, alone. Apparently, the presence of what appears to other people as a real person, gives them enough security to drive around town.
Now, I wonder — do women over-estimate the blow-up dolls’ size, too?
However sexist the whole concept [...]
Verichip RFID clonable (thus totally unsafe), despite the company’s promises
I just heard from somebody that on HOPE, a presentation was given how easily the Verichip RFID chip implant can be cloned (thus identities stolen, people posing as other people getting easier because nowadays, somehow, everything must be digital or something.
Basically, the work is done by this device, called the proxmark3, that;
[it] can do almost [...]
Revealing how marihuana affects the brain
| by in Health, Interesting Links, Random Rantings, Visions |
OK so I was just reading this article right here telling about how scientists have developed a way to image cannabinoid receptors in the brain.
All fine and dandy — I see no problem there.
Until 1959, cannabis was available in pharmacies as medicine, under the name Extractum Cannabis Indicae. After that, cheaper, synthetic drugs appeared [...]
Holiday coming to an end…
| by in General, The Netherlands |
Today it’s Thursday, with only a few days before the next week in which I’ll go back to work. Monday will be an interesting day I’ll bet (I will post an update on that when that day has passed).
Then, my two week holiday will have ended, with my age being one year older than when [...]
So it’s my holiday…
| by in Animals & Nature, Bunnies, General, Health, Sad Stuff |
…and as with every start of a holiday, some shit happens to one of our animals. Every year it’s the same story, but with a different animal each time. We got four in total, 2 cats and 2 rabbits.
So we were sleeping and in the middle of the night, last friday, we heared a *bang*, [...]
Jihad Watch — WTF?
Don’t know how I got there, but I discover this site that I wished I didn’t.
Apparently, the site in question sees itself as some authority on Islam — because they say they’ll educate the West about them (they obviously misspelt ‘propaganda’ there).
Anyways, it is clear that they haven’t read this article (which really makes a [...]
On smell-technology…
It’s amusing to see how ‘new’, almost magical technologies get embraced with so-much naivety. Slashdot has this little blurb about an article in the New Scientist on ’smell-technology’;
“Simply point the gadget at a freshly baked cookie, for example, and it will analyse its odour and reproduce it for you using a host of non-toxic chemicals. [...]
I really wonder what’s in US marihuana…
| by in Humour, Interesting Links |
I just discovered this news through ShaolinTiger: apparently, some guy broke into a tomb to cut off a bodies head in order to use it as a bong. WTF?!
Now I really wonder what they put in United States marihuana because, hell, I want some of that too!
Marihuana, Drugs, US, Funny
Hardware: SmartJoy Dual Plus USB adapter
Yesterday, the SmartJoy Dual Plus USB adapter arrived by snail-mail. I ordered that thing so I could use the good old PS2 controllers in stead of buying a new set of joysticks to play games on the PC.
The adapter with 2 pads plugged in. If you’re wondering about the semi-transparent white plastic wrapping around the
controllers’ [...]
On the Theory of Evolution…
So, I was watching Discovery Channel’s Monkey Business when suddenly the following ‘revelation’ hit me, a thought that never had crossed my mind probably because it was staring me in the eyes all along.
See, in order to prove that we descend from monkeys (’mere animals’ as some tend to think), scientists are on this quest [...]
On the last Potter story…
| by in General, Random Rantings |
So I just read this Dutch news about the last Potter story (still in progress) featuring the deaths of 2, yet unknown, characters.
She explains in the article (and this is the whole reason why I took the time to write this little blurb), that, although she initially didn’t want to let some die, she now [...]
Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars
Don’t know if you ever read the document of that same title. If you haven’t, by all means do. Real or not, the document does give some interesting insight.
Any similarities with international money-tracking, under the guise of ’searching of terrorism’, must be purely coincidental.
War, Money, Society, Control
Programming the Cell Broadband Processor
A colleague just pointed me to this post linking to some articles on programming the Cell Broadband Processor (the technology that powers the Playstation 3). If you’re into that stuff you might want to check it out.
I also noted that, although Sony’s marketing machine is slowly being put into motion, there’s quite a bunch [...]
Yay — we lost!
Soccer sucks, we lost and the team will return today. Double — no — tripple yay!
Sadly though, this doesn’t mean we’re finally ridden of that irritating soccer championshit bullshit on every goddamn television channel where not a single station is airing interesting movies or programmes at all, fearing nobody would watch it anyways.
Maybe that’ll change. [...]
Wired: UFO-hacker tells what he found
I discovered through Darknet that Wired is running an article with an interview with Gary McKinnon, the guy that hacked NASA to find proof for the existance of UFO’s.
WN: Some say that you have given the UFO motivation for your hacking as a distraction from more nefarious activities.
McKinnon: I was looking before and after 9/11. [...]
‘Rabbit week’ at CuteOverload.com
| by in Animals & Nature, Bunnies, Interesting Links |
Don’t know if you noticed — let alone care — but the last week some Japanese rabbit store’s website is being featured on Cuteoverload because of its dangerously high content of cute. Well, the images of the rabbits anyways.
Today’s image is really cute (check the ears).
You might want to check the others out if [...]
An Open Letter To Hip-Hop About Some Real Important Shit
Just discovered Davey D’s Open Letter To Hip-Hop About Some Real Important Shit through Guerrillafunk.com, regarding net neutrality and how these possible changes will change your life and the lack of focus on this issue.
Anyway your next steps should you choose is to call your Senator’s office and tell them to stand up and protect [...]
The Iranian Badge Hoax
When this was still fresh, I knew this was all bullshit. Few message boards I frequent were discussing it and debunked it quite rapidly. Somebody at kuro5hin recently wrote an interesting piece about it, and here’s a link to the article:
The world reacted with shock and dismay last month to the news that Iranian Jews [...]
The security implications of this exceed those of Google Earth!
| by in Humour, Interesting Links |
So, I received this link from a colleague, explaining how one can build their own Airbus A380 airplane. (Well, a paper model of it, anyway.)
Me, with my nasty ways, couldn’t resist saying `So, where’s the foldable model of the Twin Towers to go with it?‘.
After further Googling I realised that, hell, the security implications [...]
Native Google Earth for Linux — beta, of course ;)
A colleague send me a link to this post telling there’s a (beta) Google Earth for Linux now!
Finally, no more tinkering with Wine, which doesn’t really enhance stability and stuff….
You can download it here.
Google Earth, Linux
The Bilderberg Group
| by in Conspiracies, Freedom & Repression, Interesting Links, Media, Religion & Politics, The Netherlands |
So I read on Prison Planet the stuff about the Bilderberg group meeting in Canada and perused the list of attendees.
Of course there are enough names on that list that raise questions and concerns.
In my opinion some noteworthy names as well. If you are paranoid, the following name explains a lot, mainly the fact that [...]
May 2006 Statistical Breakdown
| by in General |
Well — as I could expect, my rant on Ayaan was a definite number 1 last month, which apparently upset people for all the wrong reasons..
Also, the initial work on my rewrite of NG-BASIC got some attention.
This month no country graph because I broke my Webalizer installation and don’t feel like fixing that today.
Vatican, Germany and prostitution..
| by in General |
So now, the Vatican lashes out to Germany and the and the World Cup Soccer Championshit (pun intended), being a ‘breeding’ ground for sex slavery, yada yada.
The Vatican fears that thousands of women might get degraded and get forced into prostitution to supply the increasing demand for prostitutes during the World Cup. (Believe me, [...]
Windows Server more reliable than Linux?
LOL this (Dutch) is what you get if journalists simply repeat other peoples words and don’t do their own research. The article compares UNIX and Windows servers, and somewhere it says that ‘the reason for the longer downtime on Linux servers is caused by the lack of proper documentation.
Lack of proper documentation?
Ever compared Windows API [...]
A Critique Of Capitalism
| by in General |
I just found this post by Sean Coon that shows a cartoon, or rather, an illustration of the ‘class’, or ‘piramid’ system.
When I quickly glanced over it, I initially thought it to be a recent illustration (I read the ‘1911′ as ‘911′), only when I looked at it more careful I noticed that it [...]
The Art Of Hypocrisy
Well, if it was an art — the US would definitely be an artiste.
So they executed al-Zarqawi. They assasinated him. The murdered him. Oh, and of course, the people around him that got killed, well, we don’t focus on that at all. Collateral damage, eh.
No, we all should just praise the fucking Gangsta US [...]
MythTV and Internet streams (MythStream)
Lately I’ve been actively using MythTV, the open source PVR. Because my FM tuner is broken, and one of my favourite radio channels is available on-line as well, I decided to look around for something that would enable me to listen to that stream.
Enter MythStream, that does exactly that job.
First problem was, getting it [...]
Wimps and Wankers…
What has happened to Microsoft’s naming scheme?
Usually they just used generic English terms to name a product (think of things like ‘Windows’, ‘Word’, ‘Office’, etcetera).
But lately this seems to have changed:
Microsoft’s XBugs, err Xbox, the toy with which they hope to conquer all house-holds.
Microsoft’s Wimp, errr, WMP, the supposed (proprietary) JPEG killer. Sure.
Microsoft’s [...]
Amnesty International: Irrepressible.info
You might already have heard about it — because of increasing Internet censorship, Amnesty International started the irrepressible.info site. I read about this site a few days ago, but today, after signing the pledge, I also found some time to include censored fragments in the header of this page. (Banners in my header are displayed [...]
The broken laptop Amir sold…
A colleague pointed me to this site about a guy that bought a laptop over the internet through eBay, finally received a broken laptop.
The fun thing is, although broken, the laptop contains a gem of personal information. Information that this new owner now has happily posted on the internet as a form of pay-back.
The seems [...]
La Coka Nostra
| by in Arts & Poetry, Interesting Links, Music |
I did wonder what the fuck happened to Everlast for some time, but last week, I discovered La Coka Nostra — the new group formed by Everlast, Danny Boy, DJ Lethal and some new talent.
Really can’t wait until their first CD is out — the tracks available in the MySpace player sound pretty promising.
Music, Rap, [...]
NG-BASIC 0.3-mega-alpha
| by in General |
The major rewrite I’m currently busy with now executes BASIC code way faster than before.
Thing is, when I initially wrote the routines that handle the BASIC programs’ execution I ran into the dreaded ‘Unresponsive script‘ error. To work around that — I implemented an ‘execute timer‘ by using the setTimeout( ) routine.
I hadn’t [...]
Nike ‘iPod’ sneakers?
The Register reports on Apple and Nike teaming up to create a new iPod accessory: a pair of sneakers that talk to your iPod.
I have serious doubts about the story though (the wireless dongle, the text-to-speech), will that work on a default, non-upgraded iPod?
Anyways, it’s interesting to note that now, not only people will pull [...]
So — they’re out for ‘our freedoms’, eh?
| by in Belegana, Conspiracies, Freedom & Repression, Media, Religion & Politics, Random Rantings, The Netherlands, Visions |
WHAT FUCKING FREEDOMS (Dutch) ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
I look around and see the quality of life terribly deteriorating: schools don’t have any decent budgets because of the ongoing mock-up wars. I can’t even walk the fucking street at night without getting fucking stared at.
So who’s the fucking terrorist? No ‘terrorist’ has bombed my neighbourhood. [...]
Things to watch out for on/after 6/06/06…
| by in General |
As one can expect, a lot of things happening on this symbolic date.
Ice Cube – Laugh Now, Cry Later
Of course, there’s Ice Cube’s new album: Laugh Now, Cry Later that will be released on that day. What I understand from what I’ve read, this album might bring back the old-school critical Cube. That’s cool, because [...]
The obvious flaw in Biometrics…
I just discovered this advisory on the Full-Disclosure mailing-list which warns for one of the many obvious flaws in those biometric authentication schemes that everybody wants to roll out, everywhere.
Yeah it’s funny.
And yeah — it’s oh-so true…
Biometrics, Vulnerability, Security
It’s official: The World suffers from War On Truth Terror
Amnesty International’s 2006 World Report is released today, RadioFreeEurope reports:
The war on terror has diverted the world’s interest and material resources from human rights emergencies, and caused “enormous damage” to the lives and livelihoods of the ordinary people, concludes the “Amnesty International Report 2006″ on “The State Of The World’s Human Rights,” released today in [...]
Ayaan: the ‘plot’ continues…
| by in Freedom & Repression, General, Media, Religion & Politics, Random Rantings, Security & Privacy, The Netherlands |
Now it’s mentioned on the news that she believes that the Dutch government should protect her, even when she’s in the US.
She says that the governments responsibility doesn’t end at the border. Well, last time I checked the Dutch law I read that is only applicable on Dutch territory.
Yeah yeah, so she wants us [...]
NG-BASIC GUI rewrite (in progress)
| by in General |
Bored, rainy weather, so… Thought I’d re-write the GUI stuff that I built NG-BASIC around.
The problem with the current 0.2 versions is, that it is has no screen buffer. Also, the key-handling kinda sucks. This all make it impossible, for instance, to move the cursor around with the cursor keys, or the interpreter in [...]
NG-BASIC 0.2.14 bug fix release
| by in General |
After tinkering with Javascript events today I thought I’d might fix an irritating bug in the NG-BASIC interpreter that caused the Find-dialog to popup every time the /-key was pressed.
It took me a while to pinpoint it, but that irritating bug has now been solved! Well, at least in my browser, Firefox 2.0alpha2. Your [...]
Let’s Bomb Iran (an anti-war song)
| by in Humour, Interesting Links |
I just discovered their funny animation on Google Video and hit the anti-war song site Let’s Bomb Iran and just wanted to share that.
Anti-War, Middle-East, Iran, Humour
The Berlin Wall & the Mexican Border Fence
Yeah the parallel is stunning.
You wonder — is it to keep people out… or in?
Immigrants, Fences, Walls, Prisons
Media attack on Charlie Sheen
| by in Conspiracies, Freedom & Repression, Interesting Links, Media, Religion & Politics, Random Rantings |
Hmm interestingly the web attempted to close in on Charlie Sheen, but luckily it failed:
WTC survivor and truth activist William Rodriguez was contacted by the Anderson Cooper show and asked if he would go on record as saying the new Pentagon footage dispelled all 9/11 questions. They also requested that he attack Charlie Sheen’s public [...]
Interesting point regarding Flight 77…
I just finished reading this Alex Jones’ article and read this possible scenario, which could possibly be true:
The fact that they have again chosen to release grainy and foggy images which only lead to more speculation tell us two things.
1) The government truly is frightened to death of releasing any images which accurately depict what [...]
Old Commodore 64 game ‘De Sekte’
While reminiscing on some old Commodore 64 games (excellent reference site by the way), I noticed this 1985 game called De Sekte (tr. The Sect).
Of course, I couldn’t resist reading more information about the game and I noticed this screenshot:
You don’t have do understand Dutch to see who’s referred to in that screen-shot and [...]
Aha so that was in that letter! No wonder that it was surpressed in western media
I wondered earlier and now I found out… Kinda:
“September eleven was not a simple operation.”
“Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services – or their extensive infiltration? Of course this is just an educated guess.”
“Why have the various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told [...]
The world according to Chávez
I just discovered this article on the Guardian about Hugo Chávez. I saw some news on TV this morning about the US and some embargo because of Chávez’s ‘liberal’ stance towards Iran.
Sure why not? Why does everything has to be about conflict and war and shit? Honestly, the more I hear him talk, the [...]
It’s official: Ayaan Hirsi (Magan/Hoegin/Ali/WhatEverTheFuckHerNameIs) sucks the US presidents’ dick!
| by in Conspiracies, Freedom & Repression, Interesting Links, Media, Religion & Politics, Random Rantings, The Netherlands |
Just reading right here that the two-timing, lying, double-crossing bitch we call Ayaan Hirsi Ali (but is actually called Ayaan Hirsi Magan) will work for the American Enterprise Institute.
Of course, I am not surprised; she’s been sucking up to the US world-wide globalisation policies for ages now; that has always been pretty damn clear to [...]
Noam Chomsky visits Hezbollah HQ
A post on the Enemyboard pointed me to this article about Noam Chomsky visiting the Hezbollah’s HQ (emphasis mine):
Noam Chomsky the famous US intellectual anti Israel and US foreign policies visits Hezbollah’s Headquarters and meets Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in the South suburb of Beirut which was once called by the former US Secretary George Shultz [...]
Who owns your PC and why ‘off’ should be ‘off’.
Just received Bruce Schneier’s latest Crypto-Gram which makes some interesting points.
One refers to this column by Bruce posted on Wired:
You own your computer, of course. You bought it. You paid for it. But how much control do you really have over what happens on your machine? Technically you might have bought the hardware and software, [...]
Religion breeds intolerance…
Most people refuse to understand that religion has been created solely for population control and mind manipulation.
If you read stuff like this:
I will not help Dan Brown get rich off a story that makes a mockery of some of my most sacred beliefs,” Ballew said this week as she prepared to attend one of the [...]
Diebold systems definitely flawed and vulnerable to fraud
I already read it last week, but still it’s interesting to note that BlackboxVoting has revealed how easy it is to exploit the Diebold voting machines to manipulate results:
[..] BlackBoxVoting.org – described a critical vulnerability in Diebold Election Systems’ touchscreen voting systems that could allow any person with access to a voting terminal the ability [...]
Paris & CSI: NY
Just read this article on the Guerrilla Funk site, which seems to send out a pretty positive signal:
In late 2004 Guerrilla Funk was approached by the creator of the CSI franchise, Anthony Zuiker. It turned out he is a huge supporter and Hard Truth Soldier to the fullest. One thing led to another, and the [...]
Paris interview
A post on Public Enemy’s Enemyboard pointed me to this interview with Paris that you might want to read if you’re interested…
Interesting quote:
Describe how your very pronounced political perspectives have affected you from a business standpoint.
There were more issues with putting out Sonic Jihad than Sleeping with the Enemy. Sleeping with the Enemy was my [...]
OK — machines have been switched…
| by in General |
…and not as seamless as I initially thought because I had to shutdown the webserver in order to nicely copy all the (log-)files as not to loose a thing.
All requests are now reaching the new machine and all seems well. Now I’m going to attempt one final complete backup of the old crappy machine before [...]
Planned downtime…
| by in General |
So, I finally got a new machine up and running — slowly migrating and testing stuff as I go along.
It was a pain getting Slackware installed as the machine has an old crappy CDROM reader that does not support ‘modern’ CDRWs. So that kinda sucks and left me with an install over NFS.
I noticed [...]
Unplanned downtime…
| by in General |
This morning I noticed the webserver had completely locked up. Upon reboot there were a number of filesystem errors from which it couldn’t recover automatically and I had to do a manual fsck. Why not reiserfs I hear you ask and indeed… Why not?
So the machine is currently up again — for the time being. [...]
Just when I was thinking `One must be a real idiot to believe the WTC went down because of two mere planes”
| by in Conspiracies, Freedom & Repression, General, Media, Religion & Politics, Random Rantings, Security & Privacy |
….I peruse the Full-Disclosure mailing-list to read that some of the guys there think Loose Change is complete bullshit.
That obviously proves there’s too many idiots in the IT security business too.
We’ve been blinded with ‘expert opinions’ on the whole WTC collapse but hell, you have to be a real moron to think that it wasn’t [...]
PS3: Pretty impressive stuff
I was just reading this transcript of the Sony E3 press conference where the new PS3 is presented.
It must have been great for people to actually have been there, when I read that:
he’s controlling a plane on-screen by wiggling the pad with his hands, using the buttons to fire and nothing else. It looks like [...]
CAPTCHA installed
| by in General |
After noticing that about 200 spam comments were attempted to be posted when I went into the Moderation section, I decided to install a CAPTCHA to prevent other bots from filling up the database with entries that’ll never show up anyways.
Sure, this will not stop all bots from an attempt to post messages, but [...]
New (search) kid on the block: ‘Clusty’
Forgive my ignorance if you have already heard about this, but while reading the most recent 2600 issue — a reader mentioned the Clusty search-engine which I had never heard about until then.
Although this search-engine also makes money from advertisements, this one isn’t as intrusive as Google’s services (from a privacy point-of-view that is).
I have [...]
Oh no!
According to Reuters,
A Senate panel approved a measure on Thursday that would change the Constitution to let Congress ban burning of the American flag, setting up an election-year debate over a perennial hot-button issue.
Now ain’t that a bitch.
They don’t talk about pissing or shitting on the damn cloth though…
US, Repression, Flag Burning, Freedom [...]
Interesting Rutger Hauer related material on eBay
| by in Arts & Poetry, Interesting Links |
I recently found out that Rutger Hauer (the Dutch actor) auctions rare, autographed stuff in order to make money for its Starfish Association.
This autographed card depicting a scene from the film Blade Runner might even be worth the hassle (no bids at all at the time of this writing either!):
There’s other potentially interesting Rutger Hauer-stuff [...]
This wasn’t my choice and definitely not theirs….
Every weekday morning, like many other slaves in this day and age, I fill up a big mug with some fine coffee and get into my car to drive to work.
It’s Spring-time, a new beginning, the start of a lot of new life: all types of birds are returning from their stay in warmer locations. [...]
That fire in Brooklyn
| by in Belegana, Conspiracies, Freedom & Repression |
So it’s reported there’s this fire raging in Brooklyn, New York.
OK — remember 9/11? You probably do.
Remember the lame theory about buildings collapsing because of the heat of a fire? You can’t have missed that excuse.
So I wonder: will this building be the 4th in the complete engineering history to collapse like the WTC towers [...]
On (Dutch) Liberation Day…
| by in General, Random Rantings, The Netherlands |
So this friday, the 5th of May, it’s ‘Liberation Day‘ in the Netherlands, a day on which we remember the fact that we have been ‘liberated’ after WW II.
The day before, the 4th, we remember all the fallen victims by a two-minute silence. Well, most people do, anyways — I don’t.
Not out of disrespect, [...]
Another bullshit campaign for a bullshit cause….
| by in General |
So, the Dutch government launched this initiative to make the youth aware of the fact that they don’t have any morals, etcetera. (The websites URL translates roughly to ‘What type of asshole are you?’.)
There’s of course, plenty things wrong with this campaign. Apart from it being absolutely stupid,
Apparently, this campaign costs about €1.000.000,=. Yeh [...]
April 2006 Statistical Breakdown
| by in General |
OK, here a quick breakdown of last month’s access statistics. Nothing really interesting occured, though.
MythTV is fun!
For the last couple of days (you might’ve noticed the lack of new posts here), I have been playing around with MythTV, the open source PVR. It is a very decent implementation too, allowing plugins for various additional functionality, such as an image gallery or the possibility to play your downloaded pr0n, err I mean, [...]
Kill Bills Browser
| by in Humour, Interesting Links, Random Rantings, Software |
A colleague pointed out this site and this one, in order to convince more and more people to switch from the bug-ridden and vendor-lock-in-causing Internet Explorer browser.
If you know me in real life, you must have heard me say that I have always thought ‘Mozilla‘ to be the ‘Explora Killa‘.
Any self-respecting technician, which ought not [...]
‘Green’ black holes
| by in Interesting Links, Space & Beyond |
Reuters reports on Black holes turning out to be ‘green’ (as in environmentally-friendly):
Just how efficient? If a car could use this kind of engine, it could theoretically go about a billion miles (1.6 billion km) on a gallon of gas, said Steve Allen of Stanford University in California.
Pretty impressive. Also,
These supermassive black holes are “green” [...]
ISC banking site survey
The Internet Storm Center asked readers to send in links to their banking sites, in order to find out whether they use SSL and other characteristics.
The results of this survey can be found on page here. It’s quite interesting to note that there seem only a few banks confirmed to require SSL and Two Factor [...]
Bush’s approval rate down to 33%
I’m reading here and there that, according to this FOX article, Bush’s ‘approval rate’ is down to 33%.
Now we can all sit around smiling and jerk off at this news but, last time I checked, he’s still in office…
Bush, Rant
Animal-rights activists extremists terrorists
| by in Animals & Nature, Belegana, Conspiracies, Freedom & Repression, Media, Religion & Politics, Random Rantings |
The Register has a story on ‘drug-industry backed’ online animal-testing petition, to..
[..] encourage the public to show their support for animal testing. The Coalition for Medical Progress hopes to mobilise what it calls “the silent majorityâ€.
Ah, I can see where this is heading: they are obviously trying to find support to be able to easily [...]
The curious origin of Mah Na Mah Na…
| by in Arts & Poetry, History, Humour, Interesting Links, Music |
You might already know this, but I only just found out today that the Muppets famous Mah Na Mah Na-song is actually a cover — a cover of a same-named 1969 song by Piero Umiliani. (Check here for more information about the composer.)
Now, of course, that alone isn’t all that interesting, but did you know [...]
Deniable filesystems
Bruce Schneier, on his blog, mentions the project Rubberhose that implements a ‘Deniable Filesystem‘.
The whole idea about these ‘deniable’ filesystems is, that, and I quote Bruce here:
The basic idea was the fact that the existence of ciphertext can in itself be incriminating, regardless of whether or not anyone can decrypt it. I wanted to create [...]
On home integrity and free (as in beer) security products…
| by in General, Random Rantings, The Netherlands |
So, I just arrived at home. I start early so I’m home relatively early than most people. I booted the laptop and while perusing some web-sites some guy rang my doorbell. I open the door and the guy introduces himself.
He explains he works for a company that wants to promote their home-security system. And, the [...]
Burqa-wearing women shouldn’t get any social ’security’
Here in the Netherlands, we have this system that gives some ’social’ security to people without a job. Recently, a debate has started that questions whether women, that wear a burqa, that cannot get a job because of the burqa, shouldn’t get any money.
Wow. I made the point in earlier posts, that this anti-burqa thing [...]
We don’t deal with terrorists!
Our foreign affairs minister, Ben Bot, turns down a report on Islam saying that he will not deal with organisations that support terror.
Mkay, did he look at Afghanistan and Iraq yet? I mean WTF? Isn’t an extradition treaty with the US, a deal with a terrorist organisation as well?
The Netherlands, War On Truth
Free Gary McKinnon
After reading this article on Darknet I decided to throw a “Free Gary” banner in the sidebar here to make more and more people aware of this weird case. The US is obviously scared of this guy (or guys alike) and rather sees them removed from society… They are of course trying to give him [...]
OMFG more fear-mongering…
German newspaper Heise reports that Google Earth could be used by terrorists during some dumb-ass corrupt soccer-championship (hey there’s tooo much money going ’round in that business to be ruled by chance) to launch rockets on the stadium.
OMFG what about traditional maps you blind motherfucker? How about the Yellow Pages? Or the fucking Phone Book [...]
That’s no ordinary rabbit!
| by in Animals & Nature, Bunnies, Interesting Links |
The Scotsman reports on the sighting of an over-sized rabbit in Felton, Northumberland:
Jeff Smith, 63, spotted the black and brown animal two months ago. He said: “This is no ordinary rabbit. We are dealing with a monster. The first time I saw it I thought to myself: ‘What the hell is that?’ I have seen [...]
Hypocrites…
OK — this was an old story about the US being pissed at Iraqi rebels for dragging the body of a dead US soldier, and then putting the stuff on the Internet.
Excuse me, but it’s a war out there. What did you expect? That everybody happily passes to power to the new US dictators? Surely [...]
The president was willing to reveal classified information for political gain ahead of Americas security shows that he can no longer be trusted
Wow this would’ve been a good one for the last Quote Of The Week, I just read about this on Sean Coon’s blog:
“The fact that the president was willing to reveal classified information for political gain and put interests of his political party ahead of Americas security shows that he can no longer be trusted [...]
Suspicious Walmart scanning system
Tony Herrera, last Tuesday, blogged about Walmart having this weird scanning system, a story which I just need to share:
This story involving Glenn Harcsar an English Teacher and his eight-months pregnant wife while they were shopping at a Sam’s Club in Monroeville, PA.
“You’ve been identified by our scanning system. You’re not going to be allowed [...]
Enigma sold for €55.050
I caught this one on eBay earlier this week, when the last bid was about 12K, but it is now sold for roughly €55K. That’s a lot of money for an old piece of machinery like this.
Then again, it is probably worth it, too. If you totally ignore what it was used for, the thing [...]
March 2006 Statistical Breakdown
| by in General |
The previous month did again show a slight increase in hits, averaging an extra 300 more hits per day. Nice to see incoming links (referrers) from some blogs in my blogroll as well.
Don’t forget!
| by in Belegana, Humour, Random Rantings |
Tomorrow is Burn The US-Flag Day!
(Artwork blatantly stolen from Sean Coon)
Got flag? Got gasoline? Have fun!
Burn The US-Flag Day, Protest, Activism
Quite a busy afternoon today…
| by in General |
This afternoon, when I was off work, I grabbed the old UNIX terminal to build myself a prototype of an idea I had some time ago. At this moment, the article describing the concept is password-protected so not everybody can read it.
The solution itself is quite elegant and it probably has been thought of [...]
Protected: Increasing storage by reducing the data (delta-compressed storage)
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
OpenOffice 2.0 kept crashing when selecting a font…
…and after it seemed that it kept happening after installing the latest 2.0.2-version, I had to look further.
The stupid thing was — if I logged into my gf’s machine (the machine having issues), and set the DISPLAY variable to point to my own X-server — nothing bad happened, no matter what font I selected! Weird, [...]
Another day, another trojan — yet not so usual
The Register reports on Deutsche Bank and the (Dutch) Postbank being targeted by a new piece of spyware.
This one, dubbed Trojan-Spy.Win32.Bancos.pw reportedly intercepts HTTPS traffic and captures so-called TAN tokens. These tokens are pieces of information that should identify a banks real customer to finalise a banking transaction.
If infected by this piece of malware, and [...]
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
Today, after recently reading this fascinating review on Noam Chomsky’s book, “What Uncle Sam Really Wants“, I picked it up.
I just finished reading it and, like after reading any Chomsky piece, it leaves me with more of my suspicions confirmed and amazed… Amazed at what the US has done, the media’s willingness to look the [...]
Ice-caps melting faster than forecast
| by in Animals & Nature, Belegana, Health, Interesting Links |
According to an article in The Star, two studies yesterday warned, that
Global warming of only a couple of degrees Celsius projected by the end of this century is enough to trigger widespread melting of the massive Greenland ice cap and the partial collapse of Antarctica’s ice sheets.
[..]
The findings are a stunning about-face from previous expert [...]
Theme changed
| by in General |
This morning I tinkered around with the customised theme I use on this site (initially simply based on WordPress Classic). I recently discovered the tonus-theme that supports inline comments through AJAX.
Tell me what you think…
WordPress, Themes, Tonus, AJAX
Another fine non-working solution to a non-issue
| by in Animals & Nature, Freedom & Repression, Humour, Interesting Links, Media, Religion & Politics, The Netherlands |
The Dutch local government in Limburg has decided, some time ago, that all the people that illegally grow marijuana will be publicly ‘burned at the stake’ by posting their name and address on an internet website.
The name of the website is ‘www.hetgroenegoud.info’ (tr: www.thegreengold.info). Yeh, as if that is really going to work. Can these [...]
Surprise: Bush Lied… *again*
Once again, more controversy over Bush, namely his reasons to go to war in Iraq:
Asked by veteran reporter Helen Thomas, “Every reason given [ for the war in Iraq ], publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war?”
Mr Bush replied: “And [...]
Hilarious: Mississippi outlaws sex toys
According to MSNBC, the state of Mississippi outlaws sex toys. This has pretty interesting consequences if you ask me.
First, what can be labelled a ‘sex-toy‘? If one shoves a pencil up his arse, can the person who sold him the pen be prosecuted?
Oh well, I guess dildos and vibrators will probably be sold as [...]
Firefox 2.0alpha1 available for preview!
I just discovered through Digg.com that Firefox 2.0alpha1 has been released:
I’ve been test-driving the Mozilla suite for years now, so I’m already downloading it. You too can check out what’s new here and download it from this FTP site.
NOTE: Do not install this version if you don’t like to test-drive bleeding-edge stuff. This version will [...]
Nice way to start the spring..
| by in Animals & Nature, Belegana, Health, Interesting Links, Sad Stuff |
If there’s one thing us humans can do, collectively, it must be fucking up this planet. The Register also reported it yesterday, and in case you missed it, the UN released a report on how recent human activity has messed-up the planet we live and depend on. To quote The Register:
As much as 80 per [...]
‘Kil’ Wilders trying to follow in Pim Fortuyn’s footsteps
One can’t say it in these days-and-age but if everybody shuts the fuck up nothings gonna change. Geert ‘Kil‘ Wilders wants to remove the first amendment, the one that states that everybody has to be treated equally and prohibits discriminatory remarks.
He wants it replaced by something that says that the Netherlands has a dominant ‘jewish-christian [...]
“You are a donkey, Mr. Bush!”
Heh quite funny news from Reuters today:
“You are a donkey, Mr. Bush,” said Chavez, speaking in English on his weekly Sunday broadcast.
“You’re an alcoholic Mr. Danger, or rather, you’re a drunkard,” Chavez said, referring to Bush by a nickname he frequently uses to describe the U.S. president.
A White House report released last week on pre-emptive [...]
HOWTO: Extracting SNMP data from an Alcatel Speed Touch Home without SNMP support
| by in Computers & Hardware, HOWTOs, Software |
My ISP gave me this crappy modem, an Alcatel Speed Touch Home. Additionally, I recently started playing around with Zabbix, which nicely supports SNMP. I can create nice statistics from the machines in my network, including nice graphs and stuff. Well, almost all. Not the modem, because it does not support SNMP.
So, I needed a [...]
Utilities: alcatell
I just created the page about ‘alcatell‘ — a utility born out of necessity. This utility enables one to easily extract information from the Alcatel Speed Touch Home modem — a piece of crap hardware that doesn’t support SNMP.
I created this utility so I could configure a UNIX host to act as a ‘proxy’ for [...]
WinXP on a Mac contest won, probably
According to The Register, The WinXP on a Mac competition has been won. I’d advise to wait until detailed instructions have been posted though, before buying a Mac. The video does look rather promising though!
Now, if it’d run Linux, I’d buy one. Although that shouldn’t be too big of a deal now, I can imagine.
Computers, [...]
HamsterTracker™
Via CuteOverload I discovered this guy’s home-brew electronics project:
Have you ever wondered:
What your hamster is doing while you sleep?
What distance has your hamster ran in her treadmill today?
How fast a hamster can run?
This is why I have developed the HamsterTrackerâ„¢ system.
Check it out, it’s definitely worth a read.
Animals, Pets, Hamsters, Treadmill, Electronics, Projects
RFID tags can be infected by virii
The Register reports that RFID tags can be infected by virii:
Dutch researchers have warned that RFID tags – small microchips, which can be used to tag products or animals – can be infected with computer viruses.
A group under the guidance of Andrew Tanenbaum at the Amsterdam Free University made the world’s RFID “malware” publicly available. [...]
Darknet: Lift / elevator hacking
Yes, you read it correctly, Lift & Elevator Hacking. This post on Darknet is excellent.
Come to think of it, it is to be expected that also the BIOSes of lifts have ‘hidden’, or otherwise nifty features.
The next time I’m on one, I’m a definitely try this shit out.
Darknet, Elevators, Lifts, Hacks
Schneier: Data Mining For Terrorists
I just received Schneier’s latest CRYPTOGRAM which has quite an interesting articled entitled Data Mining for Terrorists.
To quote the intro (emphasis mine):
In the post 9/11 world, there’s much focus on connecting the dots. Many believe that data mining is the crystal ball that will enable us to uncover future terrorist plots. But even in the [...]
Ten best security live cd distro’s
Yesterday, an article on 10 Best Security Live CD Distros (Pen-Test, Forensics & Recovery) was posted on Darknet.
Live CD’s are the type of operating systems that fit on a CD, can boot almost any hardware, and allow you to use the machine to quite a large extent. The distro’s mentioned in the article are not [...]
Isaac Hayes wants to quit South Park
According to an article on Billboard.com, Isaac Hayes wants to quit South Park. Obviously, because they have ridiculed (and quite right to do so), the Scientology ‘belief’.
Interestingly, this is what one of the creators of South Park, Mark Stone had to say about this:
In an interview with the Associated Press, “South Park” co-creator Matt Stone [...]
1001inventions.com
| by in History, Interesting Links |
Slashdot reports of a website detailing 1001 Islamic inventions.
The OP finds the list quite surprising whereas I don’t: I already was aware of the fact that a lot of our current civilisation and intellect come from the Middle-East.
Then again, I bet a lot of people didn’t know this, so in that respect, it’s a [...]
Post-Mortem Data Destruction
I just posted my first article on Darknet about `Post-Mortem Data Destruction‘. This article roughly details a system for detecting the event of your death and destroying all your private information when this happens.
Post Mortem Data Destruction, Darknet, Navaho Gunleg
In stores tomorrow: Hard Truth Soldiers Vol. 1
| by in Arts & Poetry, General, Music |
In case you didn’t know, and you are into political rap (like it is supposed to be), there’s two albums coming out tomorrow that you got to have.
I’ve already pre-ordered these, because I do buy CDs from artists that are worth listening too and actually care about the world and the people who buy their [...]
February 2006 Statistical Breakdown
| by in General |
Let’s see what happened on this site in the month February. I’m still getting traffic from various sites where something has been posted about my BASIC interpreter.
Strangely, the Burn the US-flag Day article generated lots of hits as well.
Bush Knew About Iraq
Yeh yeh, this doesn’t come as a surprise to many, but now it is ‘official’: Bush knew about Iraq. Specifically, the fact that Saddam Hussain did not have any weapons of mass destruction. Contrary to what the government publicly spread, the facts seem to be telling another story:
Two highly classified intelligence reports delivered directly to [...]
Darknet introduction article…
| by in General, The Netherlands |
My introductory article on Darknet was posted yesterday.
It happens that I am currently busy writing 1 or 2 articles which will be posted there in due time.
I have become a bit busier in my personal life lately too, which might explain the decrease in the amount of posts on this site as well.
Don’t worry: [...]
Florida Voting Machine Logs Reveal Anomalies
| by in Conspiracies, Freedom & Repression, Interesting Links, Media, Religion & Politics, On The Road..., Security & Privacy |
I knew it, the rest of the world knew it, and now it seems the 95 percent naive American fucks that decide the US’s future are slowly waking up to the truth as well.
According to this posting on Slashdot,
“Having ’successfully sued former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the [...]
Hip Hop Appreciation Week 2006
| by in Interesting Links |
I just read this on KRS-One’s Temple Of HipHop:
MARK YOUR CALENDARS! May 15th-22nd 2006 marks the 9th Annual Hip Hop Appreciation Week (H.H.A.W.). Since 1998 the third week in May has become a time to reflect upon our roles as citizens of the international Hip Hop community and to recommit ourselves to Hip Hop’s core [...]
Halliburton Detention Centers
I just read this article on ZMag.org, entitled “Halliburton Detention Centers”:
Vice President Dick Cheney’s personal cash cow is the lucky beneficiary of yet another government contract. The Halliburton story of banana republic corruption is well known to anyone not living under a rock. Because their crimes have gone unpunished, news of Halliburton chicanery barely raises [...]
NG-BASIC 0.2.12
| by in General |
Today I found some time to perform some code cleanup on NG-BASIC.
A lot of obsolete code, like old routines and commented-out debug stuff has been removed — just about 380 lines.
Other than that, no noteworthy changes.
NG-BASIC, BASIC, Javascript, Firefox, Interpreters, Programming
“Miserly politicians that keep praising the legacy of MLK while sticking knives into it”
I just read this article in the Guerrilla Funk Thought Box that I couldn’t resist to share here. It’s on Martin Luther King, what he stood for, and current politicians using it for their own good:
Today, a slick rhetorical formula enables current generations of such miserly politicians to keep praising the legacy of Martin Luther [...]
NG-BASIC 0.2.10 bugfix release
| by in General |
I just updated my BASIC interpreter implementation in Javascript to NG-BASIC 0.2.10.
The main and only change is the the Canvas bugfix. Due to calling beginPath() and closePath() in the wrong order, polygons started appearing in stead of circles.
Strangely enough this hadn’t affected earlier versions of Firefox 1.5 otherwise I already would’ve seen the problem.
Anyways — [...]
Low-fat diet doesn’t decrease chances of cancer or heart-diseases
| by in Health, Interesting Links, Random Rantings |
It is official — low fat diets do not decrease the chances of one getting cancer or any heart-related diseases.
In other news: Smoking itself doesn’t cause cancer, only the constant nagging about it does.
Smoking, Cancer, Fat, Diet
Darknet relaunch
Darknet is being relaunched:
Darknet is currently undergoing a relaunch, it has been rebuilt from scratch in a new style using a powerful and extensible open source CMS called Wordpress.
We are looking for people to write articles about anything to do with Hacking, Cracking or Information Security.
Topics such as tutorials, discussions, news, exploits, tool releases, coding [...]
Why wasn’t it the other way around… And….. fatal?
| by in Conspiracies, Humour, Interesting Links |
Hehehe — I was waiting for an opportunity to do this (peruse the latest 2600’s letters section to find out why): a certain maniac accidentally shoots fellow hunter, CNN reports:
“The vice president didn’t see him,” she continued. “The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And [...]
Israel to build a ‘Museum of Tolerance’
Sean Coon has an spot-on view on Israel building a ‘Museum of Tolerance’ on a Muslim burial ground.
They’re about to pull, as Sean so nicely puts it — some serious poltergeist shit:
Skeletons are being removed from the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem to make way for a $150m (£86m) “museum of [...]
New research indicates near-lightspeed-travel seems possible
| by in Interesting Links, Space & Beyond |
PhysOrg.COM reports that, this February 14th, Dr. Franklin Felber will present a new exact solution of Einstein’s Gravitational Field Equation. In plain English, this means that physical objects might travel at a speed near the speed of light after all. This was always deemed impossible by many:
Felber’s antigravity discovery solves the two greatest engineering challenges [...]
Firefox users surf safer
According to Yahoo! News, two University of Washington professors went out to investigate looking for spyware on the Internet during 2005:
“We can’t say whether Firefox is a safer browser or not,” said Henry Levy, one of the two University of Washington professors who, along with a pair of graduate students, created Web crawlers to scour [...]
Nice video on Google Video…
| by in Interesting Links, Music |
Just caught this on Google video… Don’t know the bands’ name, but the song’s quite nice.
New World Order, Music
2600 Secrets
| by in Humour, Interesting Links |
Speaking of 2600 — I just discovered 2600 Secrets that highlights the ‘hidden messages’ in the 2600 magazines.
I hit that page because I wondered what happened to page 33:
Winter 2004/Page 33: The phrase “enough already“
I missed that — that explains all…
2600, Hidden Messages
Google Desktop privacy concerns
Hot from the EFF’s site:
“Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google’s search logs, it’s shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “Unless you configure Google Desktop very carefully, and few people will, Google [...]
So AIDS is man made after all…
| by in Conspiracies, Health, History, Interesting Links |
Reading around in the Guerrillafunk Though Box archive I was rather amazed by the article entitled “AIDS man made origins”. (There’s a lot of other juicy stuff there but for now we’ll focus on this.)
I heard this theory before that the US might have been behind it, but any substantial references were always lacking. (And [...]
Still write checks? Beware of check-washing!
A post on Schneiers’ weblog pointed me to this article about Check Washing:
Using a process known as check washing, mail snatchers erase the ink on a check with chemicals found in common household cleaning products or on the shelves of your local Walmart and then rewrite the checks to themselves, increasing the amount payable by [...]
Why you shouldn’t shove your penis through the slit of a letterbox
| by in Humour, Interesting Links, The Netherlands |
In Ede, The Netherlands, some guy inserted his penis through the slit in a letterbox. The woman living in that house, reacted quickly, and used some piece of iron to hit on it.
When she opened the door, she saw a 30-year old man running away.
Now that’s hilarious, and possibly a good reason never to ever [...]
Rare animals (re-)discovered in New Guinea, and then some
The Los Angeles Times reports on a trove of unearthly species that have been uncovered in New Guinea’s ‘Eden’:
The naturalists also obtained the first photographs of the golden-fronted bowerbird, a species previously known only from a few skins collected by local hunters.
The bird is so rare that at least a dozen expeditions in [...]
Dshield is famous!
I visited Dshield.org today and noticed this diary entry:
Super-secret spy agency sensor grid – $Billions
Security for a visit from the President of the United States – $Millions
Showing the President that your prime source of information is a bunch of volunteers – PRICELESS!
Where would this world be without volunteers?
Volunteers, NSA, DShield, SANS
Nice Greenpeace commercial (2003)
| by in Animals & Nature, Humour, Interesting Links |
Last weekend I was watching John Culshaw’s Commercial Breakdown on BBC television where I saw this commercial by Greenpeace and I couldn’t resist to go and look for it on the web.
Although being an oldie (about 3 years old now), its topic is still current so it’s fun to watch. Really.
You can download it right [...]
Harvey the Herder
| by in Animals & Nature, Bunnies, History, Humour, Interesting Links |
I today discovered this story about a rabbit called Harvey the Herder. Check out the link to find out why.
Rabbits, Animals
NG-BASIC available with a larger font
Because of popular demand, I today found some time to quickly hack up a larger font variant of NG-BASIC.
Go and check it out.
NG-BASIC, BASIC, Javascript, Firefox, Canvas
More slight site changes
I played around with the StatTraq information in the database to create a Todays’ Most Popular section in the sidebar.
I put a mostpopular.php now resides in the plugins/ directory that looks up some information for display in the sidebar.
Additionally, I created a wp-mostpopular.php in the WordPress root-directory that can directly be accessed to view [...]
Buckyballs? No — buckytubes!
When I was a kid, popular science magazines were already having wet-dreams about nano-technology and all the possible good it will bring.
It took an awful long while before the technology is now finally used!
IT week reports Nantero will soon be shipping DIMMs built with a new technology. It will contain so called carbon nanotubes, [...]
Xena: A 10th planet after all…
| by in Interesting Links, Space & Beyond |
When first discovered, a lot of scientist were still sceptical as to if this planet really could be considered a planet because of its relatively small size, et cetera.
According to Scientific American, this 10th planet, dubbed Xena, proves to be bigger than Pluto:
When astronomers announced the discovery of UB313, the so-called tenth planet, a little [...]
WP-UserOnline plugin installed
| by in General |
After visiting ShaolinTiger’s weblog today, I noticed his nifty ‘Users Online‘-thingy.
So, I Googled a bit and just installed the WP-UserOnline plugin that enables one to view the number of current online visitors.
This number of users now appears in the sidebar. Clicking on it will display a page showing all the current visitors and the page [...]
January 2006 Statistical Breakdown
| by in General |
To my amazement, the new year brought a steady flow of visitors to this site. Not any significant numbers, but steady nonetheless.
Below a breakdown of the month January.
Webalizer getting political?
| by in Interesting Links, Software |
I don’t know exactly when this was put in place, but the Webalizer Homepage now shows a nice Impeach Bush banner on the bottom of the page.
Not that I can do anything about it living in The Netherlands, but I can sure as hell help advocate it:
Nice. Although being quite stale as a project [...]
Geert Wilders is a dangerous, provoking, politician…
Hear ye’, hear ye’…
Geert Wilders: Another Dutch corrupt fuck ass-hole politician.
If a Muslim burns a European flag or American flag, the country he lives in is as good as invaded and an interim-government installed before you can spell ‘jihad‘.
Updated Permalink structure
| by in General |
I just updated the Permalink structure used on this web-log. It now contains year, month, day, and a descriptive string.
For instance, this page’s URL isn’t [..]/blog/?p=231, but rather [..]/blog/2006/02/01/updated-permalink-structure/ and the NG-BASIC interpreter is now available on the URI http://navahogunleg.net/my-projects/ng-basic/.
Check Your Testicles!
| by in Health, Interesting Links |
If you still need reasons to play with yourself, all over Dutch media passed couple of days the following advice:
Men, after their puberty, should regularly check their testicles for weird lumps, et cetera, as that might be an indication of cancer.
So there…
Cancer, Testicles, Men
WordPress upgraded to 2.0
After seeing that WordPress 2.0.1 is available, I immediately downloaded it to start the upgrade process as described here.
The upgrade went without any problems, or at least it seems so at this point…
WordPress