posts brought to you by the category
“email”
Das eez kaput! Sometime around 2002 I spaced the entire
database table that mapped individual entries to
categories. Such is life. What follows is a random sampling of
entries that were associated with the category. Over time, the
entries will be updated and then it will be even more
confusing. Wander around, though, it's still a fun way to
find stuff.
Simon Cozens : What is a person?
It'll do for now, until I come up with another pretty diagram.
Movable Thoughts #21 : Removed -T from mt.cfg and
mt-send-entry.cgi
You can enable taint mode explicitly with the
-T
command-line switch. You should do this for daemons,
servers, and any programs that run on behalf of someone
else, such as
CGI
scripts. Programs that can be run remotely or anoymously by
anyone on the Net are executing in the most hostile of
environments. You should not be afraid to say
No!
occasionally. Contrary to popular belief, you can exercise
a great deal of prudence without dehydrating into a
wrinkled prude.
On the more security-conscious sites, running all
CGI
scripts under the
-T
flag isn't just a good idea: it's the law. We're not
claiming that running in taint mode is sufficient to make
your script secure. It's not, and it would take a whole
book just to mention everything that would. But if you
aren't executing your
CGI
scripts under taint mode, you've needlessly abandoned the
strongest protection Perl can give you.
The
Camel Book, 3.0
Meanwhile, the street continues to find its own use for
things.
The thing that makes The Habeas Warrant Mark so unique is that it is
written as haiku, an ancient Japanese poetic form. Since our headers
are actual works of art, Habeas can use the powerful legal tools
available for copyright and trademark protection to prosecute
violators. In fact, Habeas has already shut down some spammers in
successful court actions.
Bob Stayton : DocBook XSL, The Complete Guide
Iain Bruce : Le Goat
Movable Type is now part of the FreeBSD ports collection,
Really, I am just annoyed that any kind of exception is made for carbonara prepared with cream
If you go to an old-skool barber, sooner or later you get used to straight-edge razors.
My coalition is enormous.
Simon Batistoni : Generating websites with Template::Toolkit::XML::LibXML
www.localharvest.org
Local Harvest maintains a definitive and reliable "living" public nationwide directory of small farms, farmers markets, and other local food sources. Our search engine ...
helps people find local sources of sustainably grown food, and encourages them to establish direct contact with family farms in their local area.
Does anyone know the history of the phrase "like druken geese in the fog" ?
I think I'm going to start including one of these charts
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : cynosure
Cynosure \Cy"no*sure\ (s?"n?-sh?r or s?n"?-sh?r; 277), n. [L.
Cynosura theconstellation Cynosure, Gr. ????? dog's tail, the
constellation Cynosure; ????, ????, dog + ???? tail.
See{Cynic}.]
1. The constellation of the Lesser Bear, to which, as
containing the polar star, the eyes of mariners and
travelers were often directed.
2. That which serves to direct. --Southey.
3. Anything to which attention is strongly turned; a center
of attraction.
Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of
neighboring eyes. --Milton.
web1913
cynosure
n : something that strongly attracts attention (as the north
star attracts mariners); "let faith be your cynosure to
walk by"
wn
Me : XML::Filter::XML_Directory_2XHTML.pm 1.0
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : word-hole
Mouth area where words come out.
ex. Shut your word-hole.
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : rapine
Rapine \Rap"ine\, v. t.
To plunder. --Sir G. Buck.
web1913
rapine
n : the act of despoiling a country in warfare [syn: {rape}]
wn
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : zeitgeist
Zeitgeist \Zeit"geist`\, n. [G.; zeit time + geist spirit. See
{Tide}, n.; {Ghost}, n.]
The spirit of the time; the general intellectual and moral
state or temper characteristic of any period of time.
web1913
Zeitgeist
n : the spirit of the time; the spirit characteristic of an age
or generation [syn: {Zeitgeist}]
wn
The Drupal-gang discuss the "Collaborative book and Instant Outlining".
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : apas
as possible as soon
ex. I'll come apas
Me : Blogger.pm 0.6.2
PalmSync
"is a Ruby(Scripting Language) library for syncing your PalmPilot with DBMS(MySQL and so on). You can also read/modify/create records in your PalmPilot using Ruby script in PalmSync."
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : somnolent
Somnolent \Som"no*lent\, a. [F. somnolent, L. somnolentus, from
somnus sleep, akin to Gr. ?, Skr. svapna sleep, dream, svap
to sleep, Icel. sofa, AS. swefn sleep. Cf. {Hypnotic},
{Somnambulism}, {Soporific}.]
Sleepy; drowsy; inclined to sleep. -- {Som"no*lent*ly}, adv.
He had no eye for such phenomens, because he had a
somnolent want of interest in them. --De Quincey.
web1913
somnolent
adj : inclined to or marked by drowsiness; "slumberous (or
slumbrous) eyes"; "`slumbery' is archaic"; "the sound
had a a somnolent effect" [syn: {slumberous}, {slumbery},
{slumbrous}]
wn
The Open Source Blogsticker Party
openRTSP
"is a command-line program that can be used to open, stream, receive, and (optionally) record media streams that are specified by a RTSP URL - i.e., an URL that begins with rtsp://
" via
hack the planet
Me : The Cheap Bastard
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is hector
| source : web1913 |
Hector \Hec"tor\, n. [From the Trojan warrior Hector, the son of
Priam.]
A bully; a blustering, turbulent, insolent, fellow; one who
vexes or provokes.
| source : web1913 |
Hector \Hec"tor\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Hectored}; p. pr. & vb.
n. {Hectoring}.]
To treat with insolence; to threaten; to bully; hence, to
torment by words; to tease; to taunt; to worry or irritate by
bullying. --Dryden.
| source : web1913 |
Hector \Hec"tor\, v. i.
To play the bully; to bluster; to be turbulent or insolent.
--Swift.
| source : wn |
Hector
n : (Greek mythology) a mythical Trojan who has killed by
Achilles during the Trojan War [syn: {Hector}]
v : be bossy towards; "Her big brother always bullied her when
she was young" [syn: {strong-arm}, {bully}, {browbeat}, {bullyrag},
{ballyrag}, {boss around}, {push around}]
| source : gazetteer |
Hector, AR (town, FIPS 31150)
Location: 35.46570 N, 92.97525 W
Population (1990): 478 (192 housing units)
Area: 5.9 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water)
Zip code(s): 72843
Hector, MN (city, FIPS 28124)
Location: 44.74143 N, 94.71269 W
Population (1990): 1145 (528 housing units)
Area: 4.0 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water)
Zip code(s): 55342
Hector, NY
Zip code(s): 14841
| source : vera |
HECTOR
HEterogeneous Computer TOgetheR (IBM, Uni Karlsruhe, Germany)
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is quagmire
| source : web1913 |
Quagmire \Quag"mire`\, n. [Quake + mire.]
Soft, wet, miry land, which shakes or yields under the feet.
``A spot surrounded by quagmires, which rendered it difficult
of access.'' --Palfrey.
Syn: Morass; marsh; bog; swamp; fen; slough.
| source : wn |
quagmire
n : a soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks underfoot [syn:
{mire}, {morass}]
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is luminary
| source : web1913 |
Luminary \Lu"mi*na*ry\, n.; pl. {Luminaries}, [F. luminaire, L.
luminare a light or lamp, which was lighted in the churches,
a luminary, fr. lumen, luminis, light, fr. lucere to be
light, to shine, lux, lucis, light. See {Light}.]
1. Any body that gives light, especially one of the heavenly
bodies. `` Radiant luminary.'' --Skelton.
Where the great luminary . . . Dispenses light from
far. --Milton.
2. One who illustrates any subject, or enlightens mankind;
as, Newton was a distinguished luminary.
| source : wn |
luminary
n : a celebrity who is an inspiration to others; "he was host to
a large gathering of luminaries" [syn: {leading light}, {guiding
light}, {notable}, {notability}]
| source : devils |
LUMINARY, n. One who throws light upon a subject; as an editor by not
writing about it.
"Peer-to-Peer Journalism is supposed to be a platform
to bring journalists with similar interests together. We hope that in the future sophisticated tools will exist to automate this process, but right now, collaboration often fails because of lack of communication." via
camworld
David Ross : "Technology is not an alien landscape where we drop artists
in with life support and hope that they'll find some friendly natives who will take them in. This is the year 2001, and we're dealing with artists with whom technology is as common as crayons."
Secret Labs : xmlrpclib 0.9.9
"is now available. This is a development release (hopefully the last one before 1.0 final), which adds support for encodings, Unicode, and HTTPS transports."
In the I Must Be Missing Something department :
"Beware browsers with broken HTTP/1.1 - they drive ZServerSSL to 100% CPU utilisation: An example is Netscape Communicator 4.72 on my FreeBSD boxen."
Rohit Khare and Adam Rifkin : The Origin of (Document) Species
"Whereas the first explanation implies a passive Web that accommodates all document formats equally, the second argues that the medium itself favors evolution from information capture towards knowledge representation. The key is that the Web can be leveraged reflexively to capture a document's structure and semantics -- that any community can define its own ontology, or adopt, extend, and combine others. In this context, we argue that the emergence of XML-based formats does not merely represent a slew of new competitors, but an ecosystem of interdependent document species."
Jeffrey William Baker : Application Performance using DBI and mod_perl
As It Happens : "The Institute of Economic Affairs
took a look at some of the websites of British MPs. The think tank describes them as comically inept, criminally bland and showing an absolute lack of character. " (real audio)
O'Reilly Beta Chapter : The Camel Book v3.0
Theodore R. Marmor : An American diagnosis
"[A]s long as anecdotal and political stories are the way we get our coverage of medicare, we'll see distortion of the program's true performance. ... For all the criticism of Canada's medicare program, I for one would be delighted to have its manageable problems in place of those in the United States.
David Adams : Speller RPC Interface
"This interface will allow any Internet- connected application to connect to a Speller server and check the spelling of any arbitrary text."
I had a lovely time at the 5 a 7
last night with with
Mikel,
Ed,
Heather and
David. I made a conscious effort not to bring a digital camera but I admit that things seemed a little strange until others broke out theirs. Truth be told, I thought it would be more fun to sketch the affair but decided that, since I'd never met any of them before, it might weird people out. So, if we do it again, you've been warned :-)
Mother of Perl : Simplified DocBk XML on the Web
"I wrote a Perl script that takes a Simplified DocBk XML article and: splits it into multiple pages, converts it to HTML, and adds all headers and footers I use for Webreference. You can download it at..."
Adbusters : Vandalism is Art
"Vandalism is a kind of parasitism born from the essence of millennial western civilization. In our current culture we stand fractured, manipulated by technology and commercial interests. Marketers assign meaning to clothing, cars, furniture, even food; we choose our meanings with our products, simultaneously creating and eradicating our sense of our selves. We are commercial projects of meaning. We are host organisms and commodity culture is the parasite. We are vandalized objects - bent, warped, covered with markings we can't honestly say we chose by free will. Sapped of community and humanity, we have come to believe that we depend on our parasite for identity." I'm not sure I really agree with all of this, but the
Invasion of the Body Snatchers language cracks me up. One day, I noticed that a friend had a small card in her office that read "Yelling is an act of violence" (ugh.) While she wasn't looking, I quickly covered it with a new card that read "I need a more suitable host body."
Rick Salutin : Yikes! Not another brave new world
These issues long have been discussed by hackers and hacktivists on the Internet. They were the context of the attacks, with AOL-Time Warner as the last straw. There's widespread contempt for what some call "the AOL lamer," says Toronto Net activist Jesse Hirsh, and agreement that there's nothing wrong with "bumrushing the mall, because these guys, the dot.coms, aren't the Internet, they're the mall, and if we shut down the mall, the Internet will still exist." Maybe the promise of the Net can then be reborn. There's a complex anger among such people, reminiscent of early industrial workers before they sorted out strategies like unions and socialism. There are older hackers, says Jesse, who have a more developed analysis; and there are the younger kids "who are like, 'Yeah, whatever, let's just fuck it up.'"
The Just Watch Me website
"It was hard to grow up under the elegant, enigmatic and eccentric Pierre Trudeau. The man was just so dominant. In Just Watch Me, we meet eight people from across the country - Anglo and Franco, separatist and federalist, idealist and realist - whose personal and national dreams are intertwined." The film is being broadcast this evening on
CBC television at 20h00 EST, and there are real video clips on the website. I heard an interview with the director this morning who opined the following : "If people had known the bi-lingualism project was about sex, they would have studied it alot harder."
It was only a matter of time
before someone decided to try and beat
adbusters at their own game...
There's been a lot of naked gift solicitation
As It Happens on the goodness of nose-blowing
Everything you know is wrong. real audio (starts 19:40)
Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt
"Sometimes we have to remove the navel and find a new spot for it." Not for the squeamish. shockwave.
The US Coast Guard
doesn't seem too concerned about Floyd, if their homepage is anything to judge by. On the other hand, they have put together a nice site devoted to information and photographs of
Historic Light Houses if you're in to that kind of thing.
The Vineyard is only now
implementing a much needed
public transportation system. It's still in it's infancy, but has improved by an order of magintude in the last year. I kicked myself, the other day, when I thought back to when the only options were car-bike-hitching and realized I had missed the perfect opportunity for a little bit of art making. It would have been a beautiful moment to wake up one morning and see the Island dotted with bus stops, maps and schedules for a 100% imaginary transit system!
Institute for Higher Education Policy : What's the Difference
"A Review of Contemporary Research on the Effectiveness of Distance Learning in Higher Education -- The report finds that the overall quality of the research is questionable and thereby renders many of the findings inconclusive. Numerous gaps in the research require more investigation and information. These gaps include the fact that the research: emphasizes student outcomes for individual courses rather than for a total academic program; does not adequately explain why the dropout rates of
distance learners are higher; does not address the quality of digital “libraries”; and does not take into account differences among students in how they learn." pdf file.
NPR on email
eating it, drinking it, hoarding it.
Prompted by all the talk about using Movable Type as an open relay for spammers, I decided to poke at the actual code and see what was going on.
There really isn't anywhere that Movable Type should be disabling taint mode but if I had to list things in order of importance, the mt-send-entry.cgi script would be near the top.
The script is potentially handing off to the sendmail program whose entire existence has been marked by security exploits. There is nothing to suggest that more won't be found in the future. Relying on sendmail to test for Potential Badness being passed by a ne'er do well via the Internet is wishful thinking, at best, and just plain crazy, at worst.
In fairness, the Movable Type mail widget tries to load Mail::Sendmail which does some basic sanity checking and, drumroll, untainting on the stuff you pass it. On the other hand it is not part of the core libraries shipped with Perl, nor is it in Movable Type's extlib directory which is a mystery since two thirds of it's dependencies are part of and the other third has no non-standard requirements itself.
Untainting email addresses can be brain-crushingly difficult and inaccurate and the last thing you want to do when you're selling a computer widget for non-techincal people is start spewing errors where there are none. But not only did the Movable Type kids disable the
-Tflag on the mt-send-entry.cgi script they don't appear to have ever done any kind of untainting on thetoandfromparameters. Hello? Is anyone home?I find this especially discouraging because one of the first things I did when Movable Type was released was send Ben code to at least try and untaint email addresses .