urandom (steve-parker.org)

Tory

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:09:47 -0800

I'm not sure that http://www.mydavidcameron.com/ is the Tory leader's official website, but it certainly made me laugh...

Do check out the posters

Google lets users opt out

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:07:39 -0800

Google lets users opt out - The Onion

The Future (and history) of Faith

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:39:31 -0800

Debian Developer John Goerzen reviews Harvey Cox's book The Future of Faith and it does sound quite interesting.

John's link (http://wamu.org/programs/dr/09/09/21.php#27929) says that Cox was until recently Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School.

As Goerzen summarises it,

Cox separates the history of Christianity into three periods: the age of faith, stretching from the time of Jesus only a few centuries until Constantine; the age of belief, stretching from Constantine until the 20th century; and the age of the spirit, now dawning. During the age of faith, �their sharing in the living Spirit of Christ united Christians with each other, and �faith� meant hope and assurance in the dawning of a new era of freedom, healing, and compassion that Jesus had demonstrated.� Cox makes the point that doctrinal questions just weren�t all that important back then, and though differences existed, they weren�t considered to be fundamental to the religion. �Confidence in Christ was their primary orientation, and hope for his [earthly] Kingdom their motivating drive.� Further, he argues that the age of the spirit is a return to this earlier age, albeit with modern twists.

I am not sure that "doctrinal questions just weren�t all that important back then, and though differences existed, they weren�t considered to be fundamental to the religion" really fits in with Paul's writings; he regularly rebuked believers (or, as Cox prefers, "followers of the Way", a label I like) for petty bickerings.

The reviews on the Amazon site (linked above) are also quite interesting.

OK Go - This too shall pass

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:33:56 -0800

I'm not normally one for passing on random YouTube videos, but this is a very nice video.

I think it was done in at least 2 takes (look at the curtain move around 2m30s) but very impressive - and presumably on a budget far lower than Honda paid for their Accord advert just a few years ago

Romantic Cryptography

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:21:14 -0800

Romantic Cryptography

Abstract. We show how Alice and Bob can establish whether they love each other, but without the embarrassement of revealing that they do if the other party does not share their feelings.

This is a �secure multiparty computation� of the AND function, where the participants cooperate in producing the result of the AND, but without learning the input bit contributed by the other party unless the result implies it.

Chip and Pin is Broken

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:04:25 -0800

This was due to be shown on BBC2's Newsnight, but it seems that the Afghan conflict has pushed it off the schedule. Cambridge University security researchers have shown in their most compelling demonstration yet, that Chip and Pin is Broken.

With a small netbook PC in his backpack, the researcher successfully used the credit and debit cards of the Newsnight team to process transactions, using a PIN of "0000" - any PIN at all would be accepted, since the card-reader believed that it was processing a PIN-verified transaction (and printed a receipt stating "Verified by PIN") while the chip on the card believed that it had fallen through to a card-and-signature protocol. The researchers explain that the negotiation for choosing a protocol (chip-and-pin or card-and-signature) is flawed. The BBC researchers confirmed that the transactions went through although an invalid (an unallowable) PIN of "0000" was used, and that none of the card issuers had contacted them about the transaction.

Oracle can't spell "Solaris"

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:19:30 -0800

The www.sun.com address now redirects to www.oracle.com. However, not everything has moved across yet - the BigAdmin pages have not been indexed, and there are a lot of other pages still missing. Searching Oracle's web site for information on Solaris comes up with a suggested replacement of "solarise":

Red Hat Certified Engineer

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:06:37 -0800

I am now a Red Hat Certified Engineer (805010462746660), having passed the RH302 exam today, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 This keeps me certified until the release of RHEL7, I believe.

The exam was quite fun, in a way; the NDA means that I can't say much about it at all, but there were no trick questions, and the tasks set were sensible but challenging. You certainly need to know the RedHat way of doing things, it is not a generic GNU/Linux exam.

Scores? Oh, go on then:

RHCE requirements: score of 70 or higher on RHCT components (100 points)


                   score of 70 or higher on RHCE components (100 points)





RHCT requirement:  score of 70 or higher on RHCT components (100 points)





RHCT components score:                             100.0


RHCE components score:                             93.8





RHCE Certification:                                PASS

As the two parts have equal merit, that makes for an overall rate of 96.9%. Where did the other 3.1% go? I wasn't entirely happy with the imaps config; I was also not too happy with how I configured NFS with the firewall, but I didn't really want to disable the firewall either. But I will never know how it was marked :-(

Copy of the PDF for reference.

301 Moved Permanently

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:31:35 -0800

Wow, that happened fast!

$ telnet www.sun.com 80

Trying 72.5.124.61...

Connected to www.sun.com.

Escape character is '^]'.

HEAD http://www.sun.com/ HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Server: sun-Java-System-Web-Server/7.0

Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:27:47 GMT

P3p: policyref="http://www.sun.com/p3p/Sun_P3P_Policy.xml", CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADMa DEVa TAIa PSAa PSDa CONi TELi OUR SAMi PUBi IND PHY ONL PUR COM NAV INT DEM CNT STA POL PRE GOV"

Location: http://www.oracle.com

Content-length: 0

Connection: close

Connection closed by foreign host.

$