8
Cultural Insight Into Slashdot by Example, Part 4
0 Comments | Posted by outtatime in Uncategorized
Comments found in article “Statistical Analysis of U of Chicago Graffiti“:
Re:License? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, what did you expect, from a mindset is not attached to physical reality?
That it would make any sense at all?
The wall with the graffiti is a physical object.
A paper photo in your hand would be a physical object.
But neither the graffiti itself, nor a photo of it, are physical works.
They are ideas/information. Other rules apply.
“Licensing”/“copyright“ is a concept, based on the misconception that ideas/information would be physical objects, and the false need of some people, to control that information.
Trying to argue with it, using logic, is (because of that false base assumption) by definition impossible.
The real physical rules for information are: If it’s out there, it’s out. Period.
So you either never give it out, and won’t be able to prove that it exists at all. Or you give it out to your chosen group.
Which can for example be people that you trust. Or, as in this case, everybody.
In case you gave it to everybody who wants it… well, you should have thought earlier about that everybody could store and copy it at will. (Just like looking at the physical wall and then telling someone, or drawing it from memory, is storing and copying.)
It does not matter if people want to accept that. Just as it does not matter if people want to accept gravity.
You can try to enforce weird rules of behavior onto people, trough mental tricks of psychology. And it may be easier to do in this case, than it is for gravity. But in the end it’s futile. Because you can’t control the whole world. Even with ACTA.
If nothing else, you will end up banning the ability to look at it, because some people became really good at memorizing and reproducing it later. And everybody who can’t remember it, will by definition not remember that it existed.
–
Whenever anyone mentions “facts”, you know he tries to shove his dogmas down your throat.
Wish I had mod points (Score:3, Interesting)
This may be the BEST counterargument ever to “all information should be free”. Bravo!
However, while I genuinely want to mod you up, I do believe that CURRENT laws to control information are stupid. Similar to how laws can sometimes be unfairly and maliciously used to allow known murderers to remain innocent and walk freely, many patents and copyrights are unfairly and maliciously used to prevent people from contributing to the greater good of humanity. Patents in particular are a minefield — something’s clearly wrong with a system that encourages trolls to cripple the true innovators.
Back to the topic, I believe what the researcher did, copyrighting her photographs, is all right, regardless of whether she released it under Creative Commons. I don’t believe she was copyrighting the actual message on the graffiti anyway, just the expression of it on photograph. (Of course properly the copyright should be attributed to both HER and whoever made the graffiti, but then I would suppose THAT’s public domain since the original author didn’t stake a claim to it…)
–
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
25
Quick wordpress wp-o-matic duplicate post disable fix
0 Comments | Posted by outtatime in Uncategorized
The hardhack solution to effectively permanently disable duplicate post titles from being created in in wordpress doesn’t get any easier than this:
http://linuxil.wordpress.com/2008/02/24/wp-o-matic-quick-dirty-duplicate-post-fix/
Thanks to linuxil!
12
Getting Wepbuster to work with BackTrack 4 Pre Release
0 Comments | Posted by outtatime in Uncategorized
So I recently found wepbuster, and have been trying to get it working with the Backtrack 4 Pre Release (or is it Pre-Final? ..).
BT4 doesn’t seem to come with all the right perl modules installed. These errors were easily “fixed” by simply installing the requested packages.
root@bt4-pre-release:~/src/wepbuster-1.0_beta$ ./wepbuster
Can’t locate Number/Range.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/pe rl/5.10.0 /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/ perl/5.10 /usr/share/perl/5.10 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at ./wepbuster line 8 .
BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at ./wepbuster line 8.
root@bt4-pre-release:~/src/wepbuster-1.0_beta$ ./wepbuster
Can’t locate Algorithm/Permute.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.0 /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.10 /usr/share/perl/5.10 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at ./wepbuster line 9.
BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at ./wepbuster line 9.
Wepbuster thread over at remote-exploit.org forums
6
Python Error/Exception: IOError: [Errno 32] Broken pipe
0 Comments | Posted by outtatime in Uncategorized
So, I got this weird exception when I ran the command:
python script_that_prints_output.py | head
..[some output, in fact, just the amount that head wanted(!)]..
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./script_that_prints_output.py", line 86, in
print out
IOError: [Errno 32] Broken pipe
I was not sure why this was happening, because when I ran the command without piping it to “head”, it ran just fine, displaying the expected output with no exceptions or errors raised.
I found the explanation for this behavior, and thought it was interesting enough to warrant a post (that way if I encounter it again at some point in the future, the odds that I’ll remember are probably greater ;):
> IOError: [Errno 32] Broken pipe
>
> Anyone know why this is happening?
That’s normal, at least with Unix. When the program on the receiving end
of a pipe decides to close its end for some reason, Unix sends the signal
‘SIGPIPE’ to the sending end. Python catches this and turns it into an
IOError exception. The only way around this (that I can think of) is to
catch the exception and exit the program gracefully. If you try to send
more data, you will get more IOErrors, since your program has nowhere left
to send data.
–
I actually thought of anohter way around it, albeit not efficient in any way (the whole point of the SIGPIPE signal is to stop the program from completing, since no further output is required from it). This is definitely a rather ugly hack, but sometimes that is preferable to adding the exception handling, I guess.
python script_that_prints_output.py > tmpfile ; head tmpfile; rm tmpfile
Update 2009-12-17: Useful information about broken pipes in Python at StackOverflow
2
Cultural Insight Into Slashdot by Example, Part 3
0 Comments | Posted by outtatime in Uncategorized
This time the insight lies in the part where he says “.. and wished that I could just use my hands instead of me feet ..”. Cheers.
1
Cultural Insight Into Slashdot by Example, Part 2
0 Comments | Posted by outtatime in Uncategorized
Not quite sure what to make of this one, other than that it is obviously hilarious. This is presented as a valuable find in the quest to making sense from nonsense, “The Theory of Quantum Interpretation of Uncertain Passages of Law”:
<!-- and NO this WASN't WRITTEN in DREAMWEAVER -->
<div>
<h1>The Theory of Quantum Interpretation of Uncertain Passages of Law</h1>
<p>by John</p>
<p>...</p>
<h3>31.4.15.9. If it isn't obvious at first glance, ignore it!</h3>
<p>Rationale: it could have been made obvious if it was necessary (the logic approach proves this) and thus it is simply not intended as a message for you and so you may logically just ignore it.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...56</p>
</div>
– The Grand Teddy Bear has Spoken http://chalisque.com/GrandTeddyBear.says%20Hello.Mum.from.John.png
I first looked at Python’s dom and minidom modules last Friday. There was an initial wave of shock for me after looking over the apparently complex API. Eventually I remembered that all I wanted to do was create a straightforward RSS feed document from a MySQL database. I had to go to class so I didn’t make much progress on that attempt.
Today I revisited the project and randomly happened upon a 3rd party Python XML library called ‘lxml‘. This module is purported to be an order of magnitude faster than Python’s dom/minidom (rendering them quite slow, painfully slow, even, by comparison). Not that execution speed is a particularly important to me in this instance. Anyways, after 4 minutes to compile the module from their Subversion repository (my server is slow, I guess..), 2 minutes of the tutorial, and approximately 10 minutes coding, I had the script doing what I had originally set out to do. The lxml API seems much more practical, at least in this case where the task and goal were pretty simple (naturally, I can’t account for other scenarios). At any rate, I guess this time around its “Vive lxml”.
At this point, the Python dom and minidom modules do have a feeling of circumstantial familiarity. They remind me of the my days of having to troubleshoot and develop fixes to address protocol incompatibilities between the Java SOAP API implementation with PHP Pear SOAP’s API. Shudder.
This is the source that pointed me to lxml.
right-click and bookmark this link, then when you are watching a YouTube video you want to download, click the bookmark. Works as of 2009-10-29.
28
How to: Attach a command line to a GUI application in C#
0 Comments | Posted by outtatime in Uncategorized
How to create a console window is a good place to begin as a point of reference.
28
Windows 7 Twilight Zone Encounter: TCP/Network connection unbroken by hibernation cycle
0 Comments | Posted by outtatime in Uncategorized
I don’t know how this is possible, but here is what just happened:
15 minutes ago I put my laptop into hibernation.
I put it in into its case and walked about an eighth of a mile to the class I was late for.
I entered the classroom, and listened to my professor for five minutes.
I then took out my laptop and pushed the power button.
After the machine resumed from standby, I entered my password.
Imagine my surprise when the Putty SSH session I had running before I put the machine into hibernation came back up uninterrupted. I didn’t know that TCP connection routing information could persist across a hibernation cycle. In fact, I would have snubbed anyone who made that claim. I guess it is time to eat my words.
The Proof:
-
- The screenshot I took just to remind myself that this really happened.