urandom (steve-parker.org)

OpenSSL on Debian

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:21:00 -0700

Predictable "random" numbers in ssh-keygen can be a real PITA - new keys, new certificates...

It's not just a Debian infrastructure thing, though - any Debian-based GNU/Linux system will have the same problem, so get regenerating those keys, folks!

The Truth About Facebook

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Mon, 12 May 2008 09:15:22 -0700

Anthrax

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:26:44 -0700

I recently had the "opportunity" to reorganise the HiFi and TV cabinets (since the kids managed to rip the door off the HiFi cabinet whilst dancing to Aqua's classic Barbie Girl contribution to society). My fault - I put it on the stereo for them.

The HiFi and TV were on opposite sides of the fireplace; they're now together, which has meant the loss of the VCR and Audio Tape decks, and the (lovely) Scott PS-17A belt-drive turntable, which had been sitting, largely unused, in the HiFi cabinet for many years. The belt had rotted a few years ago through age and lack of use. When I removed all the kit from the cabinet after the cabinet door's destruction, the kids added insult to injury (or is that vice versa) by following Dad's "lesson in analogue audio amplification" with a practical in "scratching without a platter of vinyl between the needle and the slipmat", so its needle is knackered now, too.

The turntable was good enough to be treasured, but not valuable enough to repair.

On the plus side, I've now got the TV wired through the HiFi, so we can listen to music DVDs/Broadcasts through real speakers, not cheapo TV speakers.

Anyway...

The resulting furniture repositioning also affected another bookshelf, which had housed most of my (now totally obsolete) record collection. Some of it - like G'n'R Appetite for Destruction (in the (ahem) original sleeve - good condition, though not shrinkwrapped like this example) could be worth up to �100. Others, like Keeping the Dream Alive (Freiheit), whilst fondly remembered, probably less valuable.

The clock-shaped 10" single of Got The Time by Anthrax I can't even find listed online; I suspect it could be worth a quid or two, but what finding it again has really done for me, is that I looked up its excellent B-Side, "Who Put This Together", and found a torrent of all Anthrax's LPs, EPs and Singles. Of the Albums:

Year	Album	Do I Already Own It (on now-unplayable vinyl)?
1984	Fistful Of Metal	Yes
1985	Spreading The Disease	Yes
1987	Among The Living	Yes
1988	State Of Euphoria	Yes
1990	Persistence Of Time	Yes
1992	Sound Of White Noise	Yes
1994	The Island Years	No
1995	Stomp 442	Yes
1998	Volume 8 The Threat Is Real	Yes
2003	We've Come For You All	No
2004	Music Of Mass Destruction	No
2004	The Greater Of Two Evils	No
2005	Alive 2	No

As a loyal fan of the band while they were still great, I don't feel terribly guilty about the prospect of picking up a few of the newer albums, which I didn't even know they had made. If I like them, it is very likely that I will buy copies to own. If not, well, I've paid for all the old vinyl, and I should certainly be able to listen to that; they've had their money, as have the RIAA.

So ... it is possible for Aqua and some destructive young children to have a positive side-effect, after all...they can even help to justify torrenting music!

The game

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Sat, 10 May 2008 15:38:21 -0700

I lost The Game. Now, so did you ;-)

Stephen Fry on the BBC's Public Service Broadcasting remit

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Sat, 10 May 2008 15:14:07 -0700

Stephen Fry, the British actor, writer and director gave a speech on 7th May, which was broadcast tonight on the BBC Parliament TV channel. Last week's talk (by Sir David Attenborough) is online

now , so hopefully this week's talk will be online next week.

Fry talked for about 50 minutes about his relationship with the Beeb, from his childhood and into his career, but he made the point repeatedly that he was speaking, not as someone who has made his career, and a good living, from the BBC, but as a British citizen who relies and depends upon the BBC, and its Public Service Broadcasting remit.

It was an excellent, well informed and well-presented talk (as we have come to expect from someone of Fry's experience. He concluded by asking if we can afford to continue funding the BBC, a question to which he responded by stating that we can't afford not to.

I do hope the talk will eventually be made available online, because its audience on the obscure BBC Parliament channel (Fry estimated an audience of "36", IIRC) will have been miniscule, and such an well-reasoned, intelligent talk on a topic of national importance deserves a wider audience.

Run As Administrator

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:50:31 -0700

My laptop came with a license for Microsoft Windows Vista.

Thank you, Microsoft, and Lenovo, for such a considerate addition to my purchase. I didn't ask for it... oh yes, that's because I didn't want it. As I have mentioned previously, I have had some level of difficulty in obtaining a sufficiently crippled version of the software to match that for which I have a license. Still, I have finally managed it. And - for what it's worth - it seems to accept that it's running under VMPlayer courtesy of Debian GNU/Linux, and not on the native machine, with the genuine license key which tells it it should be on a Lenovo laptop.

Either the licensing confirmation is poor (it did query it at first), or it's going to complain again at some point in the future. Really, who knows? For now, let's assume that it's happy to be running on the hardware to which it was licensed, which it is.

I wanted to transfer a file to my lovely Windows Vista system, so I needed a way to communicate with the Debian box. I tend to use hostnames, rather than IP addresses (call me awkward if you will), so I thought I'd set up the /etc/hosts file under Windows Vista.

From previous experience, I know that they store it somewhere like c:\windows\drivers\system32\etc\hosts, so I found the file. Double-clicking on it gave me the file - with IPv4 and IPv6 entries for localhost.

But I can't save it, and nothing within Notepad (their idea, not mine - but apparently it doesn't matter what app you use to open the file, the permissions are the same) will allow me to tell it that I am allowed to edit the file.

This is where the "Run as Administrator" feature comes in... except it only seems to work for applications, not for files.

It is not enough to browse to the file, and click "Run as Administrator" - one must first select the application you want to use (why should I even know what it is, let alone where to find it?!), and run the entire application as ~~root~~Administrator, and then use the application to locate the file again, and once more open the file, edit it, and save it.

With this method, there seems to be no accountability whatsoever; it may be logged somewhere (I've got no idea!) that "Steve" took Admin rights over "Notepad.exe", but it won't know what I did with those rights. If it was logged that "Steve" took rights over "/etc/hosts", then, it would be possible to see what kind of thing I was up to. If your logs (I kindly assume that some must exist) simply tell you what applications were used, but have no other control, then what is the point in their existence?

I will ignore the slow disk access (96 minutes for 608Mb? That's 6Mb per minute, or 10Kb/s)... As it is running under VMWare, and "could be" due to issues beyond Windows' control. Since the rest of the machine seems to be running fine, it is somewhat unlikely, but let's give the benefit of the doubt wherever possible, eh?

After all that, the game didn't install, so the whole event was a waste of time.

Nearly as bad as when I tried to use it to write a MS Word document based upon an MS Word template; OpenOffice.org struggled, and created a 30Mb document. With some messing, got that down to 3Mb - still a huge thing for a 7-page document. MS Office 2003 (borrowed use) refused to open the template. MS Office 2007 ("trial" use) opened it, messed up the ToC, and still created a 3Mb document.

MS Office 2007 still believed that the 7-page document's "Total Page" count was 10, and - although OO.o sorted the ToC properly, I had to hack the ToC by hand to make it work in MS Word.

I keep on saying: "Microsoft Windows will not catch on", and nobody believes me. I don't know what I'm missing out. The "killer apps" are either nonexistant, inwardly incompatible, or simple undocumented. The OS itself is inherently unstable, too open to 3rd-party closed code, and demonstrably insecure.

There is no compelling reason to use Windows, let alone Office.

OpenOffice.org (and StarOffice) are not perfect, but it's taken this experience to remind me how far ahead of MS Office they are.

As for Windows Vista; that's another story.

GNU/Linux will remain the dominant desktop Operating System until Microsoft can fix these major misfeatures. Microsoft simply don't stand a chance, given the currently available alternatives, be it on the OS level (GNU/Linux), the tools level (GNU and others), or applications (OpenOffice.org and all the countless others).

Wishlist Update

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:18:27 -0700

A small update to the Wishlist search functionality - actually a reduction in functionality, if you like.

If you search for "Bob", and "Bob Smith" had no active WishLists, it would tell you so.

Now, it doesn't confirm that "Bob Smith" has an account at all.

There was no major privacy breach previously - your full name is not exactly a national secret, unless it's "James Bond", but this should improve the system somewhat; if you don't have an active wishlist, then according to the search function, you don't exist. Or at least - it doesn't say whether it knows of you, or not.

Nine Inch Nails

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:38:54 -0700

It seems that Nine Inch Nails have released their latest album as a free (in exchange for your email address) download via BitTorrent.

It's available in MP3, FLAC, M4A, and even better-than-CD-quality 24bit 96kHz.

What really surprises me though, is the speed it's downloading as a torrent... I'm used to Torrents taking days to complete - does that mean that I just like obscure stuff, and I've now gone mainstream with NiN?

No, it seems that it may be that the already-neglected Gnome client possibly does have flaws already showing; btdownloadheadless shows about 175Kbps, which is still better than I usually get from BitTorrent.

Still, when I looked at it again, a few minutes later, it had finished downloading.

Do Not Enter When Closed

uRandom - Steve-Parker.org — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:57:04 -0700

When I ventured into the big city the other day (I really must get out more...), I went via the tram station, where I saw this intriguingly-marked door.

The door covers the entire doorframe, so it's not as if this door could be closed as an indication that one should not travel through the space; the only way to "enter when closed" would be if one could possibly drill through the door, or maybe in some kind of Portal-type of scenario, simply reappear on the other side of the door.

What kind of incoherent existentialism leads to such a sign being created?

What kind of stupid blog allows the images to flow through to previous posts, though?

I seem to need this filler, so that those weirdos with wide resolutions get the right images in the right blog posts.

I really ought to work out what I need to do with "clear:both" or suchlike to make it really work properly.