Ahab Has A Blog.

New blog software New blog software is on the way. It's designed to have blosxom-like features: friendly to Un*x shell administration, filesystem matches URL path, etc. Where it differs: smart caching of metadata and indexes for performance, not dumb template driven (opening the full value of Perl via Mason), and, hopefully, easier to extend (with, e.g. web-based interface, comment engine, etc). It will continue to eschew the spurious, profligate, lazy, undisciplined use of relational databases as the universal crutch to web developers. Don't get us wrong: we like RDBMSen when they are needed. When they aren't, they are a genuine obstacle to superior web application development. We'll stop here before we start sounding like that old screed about aolserver and tcl.

Until the blog software's done, it will probably dominate whatever Copious Free Time formerly used to rant and vent and send secret encoded messages to unheard-of interstellar conspiracies. So there may be some odd-seeming rants. Yes, odder than usual. Odder fodder, said the cow.

previous_next

previous_next is a blosxom plugin for adding links to the previous and next entries. this only applies when viewing and individual entry; when viewing a category or time-based url, it does nothing.

download version 1.0 here.

it's simple, but like the moreentries plugin, it gives you a way to navigate to entries that could otherwise be unreachable. it's probably a good complement to the moreentries plugin. it should maybe have a condtional template when there is no previous or next entry.

version 1.0 calculates the "previous" and "next" entries among all entries The sorting is simplistic, possibly different than Blosxom proper, and isn't sensitive to the date-based archives (e.g. /blosxom.cgi/2004/04/01/). The problem is that it's not easy to get access to a sorted list of stories at the filter() hook stage. This is a result of Blosxom design and therefore it's unlikely I'll do anything about it until Blosxom3.

the next, intermediate version is 2.718.1. it's not quite a formal release and probably needs some more work. it can sort forward or backward, by mtime, by filename, or not at all. it has some nice formatting options. it can consider all entries, or just the ones in the current directory. but it still doesn't play nicely with the sorting challenges noted above.

download 2.718.1 here. it can restrict by a given category depth, but this is hard to explain and maybe needs documentation changes. and it has some other weird pruning options that are probably "unuseful", for the reason that they often behave weirdly (correctly, but not necessarily usefully). i'd like it to sort "blosxom-wise" and toss the complicated pruning and sorting options. that will probably be version 3.0 and come out with blosxom 3.0.

importing opera bookmarks to mozilla i switch browsers every so often, either because something is better, or else just because. this time i'm switching from opera to firebird. i switched to opera because of speed issues with firebird on websites and for the linux flashplugin. i was using opera for linux on freebsd with the linux flashplugin, and opera is the fastest browser out there, period). i'm switching back because firebird 0.7 renders better, because i don't like opera's bookmark, tabs, or privacy features as much, and, with the flashwrapperplugin port, i can use a native, open source browser (with the linux flash plugin).

so, back to firebird.

i liked these instructions on using flashwrapperplugin. you may have to change the name of the plugin directory for your browser.

opera's bookmarks, however, can't be imported by firebird. this perl script will do it (e.g. opera2moz.pl < opera6.adr > converted.html). i'm sure there are about 12 million cases where it doesn't work, or just complains too much, but it worked for me.

Another blosxom plugin

this is another new blosxom plugin.

you can download the plugin here. as for documentation, read the inline documentation via perldoc preview.

this plugin allows an author to preview an item before making it generally visible. i didn't include it in the documentation yet, but it should come before the hotlists plugin i made, e.g. by naming them 10preview and 20hotlists. otherwise, preview items *will* show up in the hotlists lists.

send bug reports and comments to sseye@ahab.com. this address gets alot of spam, so you might also try the blosxom mailing list too.

vote! since it's election day, we'd like to remind you that we actually do believe in something, namely that people tend to be better off in places where political preferences and opinions are openly expressed and where people choose their leaders. so please vote.

but, since politely asking doesn't do much, we'll see if we can't scare you into voting. this entry is about flawed electronic machines and attempts to silence discussion about your right to vote. the whole story started like this:

---

-----Original Message----- 
From: Lana Hires [mailto:lhires@co.volusia.fl.us] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2001 8:07 AM 
To: jmglobal@earthlink.net; Glanca@ges.com 
Cc: Deanie Lowe 
Subject: 2000 November Election 

Hi Nel, Sophie & Guy (you to John), 
I need some answers!  Our department is being audited by the County.  I have 
been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 
gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded.  Will someone please 
explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of 
standing here "looking dumb".  I would appreciate an explanation on why the 
memory cards start giving check sum messages. We had this happen in several 
precincts and one of these precincts managed to get her memory card out of 
election mode and then back in it, continued to read ballots, not realizing 
that the 300+ ballots she had read earlier were no longer stored in her 
memory card .  Needless to say when we did our hand count this was 
discovered. 
Any explantations you all can give me will be greatly appreciated. 
Thanks bunches, 
Lana

---

And there was lots of discussion about this, pretty scary. This discussion is among the data that Diebold is trying to cover up by suing people with an anti-piracy law. One thread of the discussion ended as follows:

---

RE: Memory card checksum errors (was: 2000 November Election)

---

• To: <support@gesn.com>
• Subject: RE: Memory card checksum errors (was: 2000 November Election)
• From: "Ken Clark" <ken@gesn.com>
• Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 16:42:50 -0600
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <011801c08195$f6781930$1404a8c0@gesn.com>

---

From: owner-support@gesn.com [mailto:owner-support@gesn.com]On Behalf Of Talbot Iredale Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 3:31 PM   Given that we transfer data in ascii form not binary and given the way the data was 'invalid' the error could not have occured during transmission. Therefore the error could only occur in one of four ways:   (2) Invalid read from good memory card. This is unlikely since the candidates results for the race are not all read at the same time and the corruption was limited to a single race.  There is a possiblilty that a section of the memory card was bad but since I do not know anything more about the 'second' memory card I cannot validate this.    Not necessarily.  We grab a pointer to the head of the candidate counters for a race and then keep that pointer as the base for the current race.  If that base was bogus (pointing at code say) because of some hardware glitch, then we would just happily walk the race looking at garbage.  Next race the pointer base is changed and everything is okay.  Now, this is still all "unlikely", but then again this has never happened before. (4) Invalid memory card (i.e. one that should not have been uploaded).  There is always the possiblity that the 'second memory card' or 'second upload' came from an un-authorised source.     If this problem is to be properly answered we need to determine where the 'second' memory card is or whether it even exists. Heh.  Second shooter theory.  All we need now is a grassy knoll.   Ken

---

Happy Halloween. Please vote, and demand to see your ballot on paper somewhere. Make a stink. Ask them what they do if the machine ever crashes. Ask them if it's a computer. Ask them if computers ever crash. Ask them if this company's machines have crashed elsewhere (tell them they have). Ask them what happens to your vote if the machine crashes.

screw verisign

angry that the company given the right to manage the dot-com set of domains, Verisign, has decided to take a piss in the pool?. That's right, the folks given the very solemn repsonsibility for administering a core piece of the internet have decided to use the tricks of spammers and thieves to make a quick and dirty buck - and help out the spammers to boot by giving them a free ride on every dot-com domain that doesn't exist. And a lot of mail servers will try to send the spam back to them and they will just reject it, which means that the skulking bastards KNEW that they'd be putting more of a spam load on the entire internet.

The gist is that if you look for a domain that doesn't exist, they'll happily tell you it does and send you there, e.g. type http://www.verisignaredirtyscumsuckingpigs.com into your browser and you'll get to their typosquatting service. This is pure evil on many levels and they should really get kicked squarely in the crotch a few thousand times for thinking they can get away with this.

Fortunately, people around the internet are cooking up ways to stop this. Call up your isp, or send them an email to abuse@yourisp.com and complain that these guys broke your internet.

Here's something interesting: run a portscan against them and they will temporarily BLOCK you from accessing the IP (currently 64.94.110.11). So I say, do agressive scanning and get yourselve blocked. That's a legitimate way to protect yourself and your servers, and it has the added benefit of adding lots of load onto them as well.

Oh, and this is a broken image that points to the non-existant domain above so that every time this page is viewed it will cause them to get more useless traffic:

And here's the scan I ran against them:

Starting nmap 3.30 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2003-09-17 14:26 EDT
Host sitefinder-idn.verisign.com (64.94.110.11) appears to be up ... good.
Initiating Connect() Scan against sitefinder-idn.verisign.com (64.94.110.11) at 14:26
Adding open port 25/tcp
Adding open port 80/tcp
The Connect() Scan took 18 seconds to scan 1644 ports.
For OSScan assuming that port 25 is open and port 1 is closed and neither are firewalled
For OSScan assuming that port 25 is open and port 1 is closed and neither are firewalled
For OSScan assuming that port 25 is open and port 1 is closed and neither are firewalled
Interesting ports on sitefinder-idn.verisign.com (64.94.110.11):
(The 1636 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
Port       State       Service
23/tcp     filtered    telnet
25/tcp     open        smtp
67/tcp     filtered    dhcpserver
79/tcp     filtered    finger
80/tcp     open        http
161/tcp    filtered    snmp
162/tcp    filtered    snmptrap
514/tcp    filtered    shell
Device type: broadband router|general purpose|router
Running (JUST GUESSING) : Draytek embedded (96%), Siemens embedded (93%), Linux
2.4.X|2.5.X (93%), FreeSCO Linux 2.0.X (93%)
Aggressive OS guesses: Draytek Vigor 2200e DSL router v2.1b (96%), Siemens
Speedstream 2602 DSL/Cable router (93%), Microsoft Xbox running Debian Linux
2.4.20 (93%), FreeSCO 0.27 (Linux kernel 2.0.38) (93%), Linux kernel 2.2.16
(93%), Linux kernel 2.4.18 (x86) (93%), Linux kernel 2.4.20 (93%), Linux kernel
2.4.19 (X86) (87%), Linux Kernel 2.4.0 - 2.5.20 (87%), Linux Kernel 2.4.18 -
2.5.70 (X86) (87%)
No exact OS matches for host (test conditions non-ideal).
TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=truly random
                         Difficulty=9999999 (Good luck!)
IPID Sequence Generation: All zeros

Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 39.607 seconds

participants the final list of core particpants in the omniopticon has been established. participants will not be notified, as we expect they know already.