jwz

I was trying out the RSS reader built into Mail.app. Does anyone find it to be anything but completely useless? It reposts items all the time -- even when they haven't changed. E.g., using it with the various Facebook feeds means you see the same things as "new" over and over and over and over.

http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/2008/08/motoring-news.html

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2008/08/27/8898864.aspx

A little while back, I invited readers to describe what students are taught (or end up believing) are the greatest contributions of their country. Many people strayed from the "what students are taught" part of the exercise, but I didn't mind too much as long as you were funny.

Here are some of my favorites:

Representing Greece is Pi, who writes,

In Greece I was also taught that Greeks invented democracy. Other than that Greeks are supposed to have laid the groundwork for the development of philosophy, mathematics, physics, biology and pretty much every other greek named thing as a science (except for economics).

Greeks claim to have organized the first olympic games some 2800 years ago. And back then there was some guy named Homer whose stories are still read today occasionally. He was also the template for the creation of a character in the Simpsons.

The sad thing is that my compatriots often think they are cool by default because of these things and they don't have to accomplish anything by themselves.

Dan reminds us that

Sweden is pretty proud of Dynamite (Alfred Nobel), and the safety match.

I enjoy that juxtaposition. Do you use a safety match to light your dynamite?

For France, we have bahbar (who pseudonym is a reference to another great French contribution to humanity):

- beheadings (just kidding)

Rafael Vargas points out a Spanish invention that is very important to students:

chupachups

Rob points out that some inventions can be used for evil:

- the first moving picture was shot in Leeds, West Yorkshire, though by a Frenchman (so we're not responsible for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle).

Leonardo Brondani Schenkel adds an important Brazilian contribution I had overlooked:

Pelé

Dan summarizes how all these claims are manifested on Wikipedia:

"John Doe was an Italian-born[1] Jew[2] of Dutch[3] and Lithuanian[4] descent who was raised in Canada[5] and lived in Argentina for several years as an adult[6]. He is perhaps best known for inventing the belly-button-lint remover[citation required]."

JS Bangs points out one of Romania's great contributions for which it doesn't get enough credit:

[W]e defeated the Turks over and over, and thus kept the Ottomans from raping and pillaging their way all the way to France. So we like to take credit for the survival of Western Europe.

At least it beats being known for providing the soundtrack to the Numa Numa video.

Canadian Ens happens to mention "the CanadArm" in an extensive list of Canadian inventions. From what I can tell, Canadians are taught that NASA's job is to launch the CanadArm into space so it can move stuff around.

Zheng Hua was the first of many to call out the Four Great Inventions of ancient China which students are drilled in from a young age.

Omer van Kloeten explains the Israeli approach:

In Israel we pretty much take credit for every invention ever made by any Jewish person in the 5000 year history of the religion.

Also, even though it's not inventions, we celebrate the fact that we survived (which for us is the same as "won") the wars of 1947, 1956, 1967, 1969, 1973, etc. while mostly being heavily outnumbered.

I remember it being explained to me by a Jewish friend that nearly all Jewish holidays are based on a celebration of the fact that "They didn't kill all of us!"

Laurent points out a common theme: A country will claim credit for the deeds of an immigrant, and will also claim credit for the accomplishments of somebody who was born in the country but made the discovery while an expatriate. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a case of a country who claimed credit for somebody who merely stopped in the country to have lunch.

A South African friend mentioned to me privately that South African are taught that their country invented the Kreepy Krauly pool vacuum cleaner and the dolos.

Glenn S tells us what Norway is proud of. It's too long to quote here, but it's worth reading because, unlike many other people who posted lists of accomplishments, Glenn's is written with the right sense of humor, playfully acknowledging that some of the claims may not be entirely fair.

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2008/08/27/8898863.aspx

Kernel handles are always a multiple of four; the bottom two bits are available for applications to use. But why would an application need those bits anyway?

The short answer is extending the handle namespace. The long answer will take a few days to play out. (This series was written in response to Igor Levicki being unable to imagine "how this can save anything (in terms of performance)". Then again, who said that it had anything to do with performance? Actually, I'm surprised that my dear readers weren't familiar with the techniques described in this series. Perhaps I shouldn't have written this series and merely replied, "If you can't think of how this could be useful, then you are not my target audience." On the other hand, reader Aaargh! believes that whoever thought to make the bottom two bits of handles available to applications should receive an asswhooping.)

But we'll start with a warm-up. If you need some sentinel values for a HANDLE, you need to make sure your chosen sentinel value will never conflict with a valid HANDLE value. If you decide that your sentinel value is something like

// code in italics is wrong
#define DEBUGWINDOW_HANDLE ((HANDLE)0x1234)

then your program is going to start acting really strange if the kernel ever gave you handle value of 0x1234. Knowing that kernel handles are always multiples of four means that you can choose a value that isn't a multiple of four and use it as your sentinel value.

#define DEBUGWINDOW_HANDLE ((HANDLE)0x1233)

Since 0x1233 is not a multiple of four, you can rest assured that no actual kernel handle will have this value, and you can write your logging function like this:

void LogOutput(HANDLE hOutput, LPCVOID pv, DWORD cb)
{
 if (hOutput == NULL) {
   // logging disabled
 } else if (hOutput == DEBUGWINDOW_HANDLE) {
  AddToDebugWindow(pv, cb);
 } else {
  DWORD cbWritten;
  WriteFile(hOutput, pv, cb, NULL, &cbWritten);
 }
}

Since you can't WriteFile to a window handle, your logging function has to do something special if somebody decided that their output should go to the debug window. But if they chose to log to a normal kernel object (a file, the console, a serial port, whatever) then you can just write the data to that kernel object. </pre>

You've already seen this before; you just didn't realize it. The special values for INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE and kernel pseudo-handles such as GetCurrentProcess are not multiples of four for exactly this reason.

Now, sure, you could have defined your own LogHandle type and have all the logging go through that type instead of just logging to HANDLEs:

class LogHandle {
public:
  static LogHandle *GetDebugLogHandle();
  BOOL IsDebugWindow();
  HANDLE GetKernelHandle();
  static LogHandle *CreateFromKernelHandle(HANDLE KernelHandle);
  ~LogHandle() { }

private:
  LogHandle(BOOL IsDebugWindow, HANDLE KernelHandle);
  static LogHandle DebugWindow;

  BOOL IsLogToDebugWindow;
  HANDLE RegularKernelHandle;
};

Throughout, your program would use pointers to LogHandles instead of actual handles, using functions like these to convert between them:

// Does not take ownership of the handle
LogHandle::LogHandle(BOOL IsDebugWindow, HANDLE KernelHandle)
    : IsLogToDebugWindow(IsDebugWindow)
    , RegularKernelHandle(KernelHandle)
{
}

LogHandle LogHandle::DebugWindow(TRUE, NULL);

LogHandle* LogHandle::GetDebugWindowLogHandle()
{
  return &DebugWindow;
}

BOOL LogHandle::IsDebugWindow()
{
  return IsLogToDebugWindow;
}

HANDLE LogHandle::GetKernelHandle()
{
  assert(!IsDebugWindow());
  return RegularKernelHandle;
}

LogHandle *LogHandle::CreateFromKernelHandle(HANDLE KernelHandle)
{
  return new LogHandle(FALSE, KernelHandle);
}

Or you could make everybody pass two parameters instead of one. For example, a class that went

class SomeObject {
public:
  SomeObject(int SomeParameter, BOOL SomeParameter,
             HANDLE LogHandle);
...
private:
  ...
  HANDLE LogHandle; // log to this handle
};

would have to change to

class SomeObject {
public:
  SomeObject(int SomeParameter, BOOL SomeParameter,
             BOOL LogToDebugWindow, HANDLE LogHandle);
...
private:
  ...
  BOOL LogToDebugWindow; // if TRUE, log to window
  HANDLE LogHandle; // if not logging to window, then log to here
};

Either way is an awful lot of work just to define a sentinel value. But still, at least you can avoid the need for a sentinel value by just passing more parameters. But sometimes that option isn't available. We'll look at that next time.

http://coppersblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/any-chance-of-small-coup.html

jwz

If You Put That Picture On The Internet I'll Call My Lawyer:

"Of course, he didn't like that very much, and at that point told me that if I put his picture on the internet, he would call his laywer. I assured him that his photo would be on the internet, and he then walked up and grabbed my camera lens."

Also, 'Three Pony Rule' Invoked to Cut Former NFL Player's Monthly $18K Child Support:

While acknowledging there are unique problems with determining the reasonable needs of children of high-earning families, the court said trial judges should nevertheless avoid overindulgence -- citing the doctrine of In re Patterson, 920 P.2d 450 (Kan. App. 1996), that "no child, no matter how wealthy the parents, needs to be provided [with] more than three ponies."

[...] "The court made no distinction between what needs were reasonable, given the age of the children, and what simply amounted to a 'fourth pony,'" wrote Parker, who was joined by Judges Rudy Coleman and Thomas Lyons.

jwz

I still haven't decided what black velvet painting I want, but this is pretty good too:

"Maoart paintings integrate with virtuosity real people's faces into faithfully reproduced propaganda posters. Based on a photograph provided by you and a poster of your choice, an artist renders you as a socialist hero."

Also, Torsopants: These would be better as posters than t-shirts, alas.

shewhohashope

rpattzdaily

smartbitches

“When you read the book,” says Pattinson, ... “it’s like, ‘Edward Cullen was so beautiful I creamed myself.’ I mean, every line is like that. He’s the most ridiculous person who’s so amazing at everything. I think a lot of actors tried to play that aspect. I just couldn’t do that. And the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that’s how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus, he’s a 108 year-old virgin so he’s obviously got some issues there.”

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/When-In-Doubt,-Choose-C.aspx

“Wait a sec,” the Edutron Systems rep interrupted, cutting off the principal of River City High, “your students still use pencils and paper to take exams!?” The rep insincerely chuckled, adding “don’t tell me you’re still using slide rules to teach arithmetic!”

As shifty as the sales rep was, he did have a good point. It was 1993, after all, and the information superhighway was on the verge of explosive growth. If the principal knew one thing, it was that he – and most certainly, his students – did not want to be left in the dust. And if nothing else, Edutron Systems could help point River City High towards the onramp.

Edutron System’s flagship product was Classroom Assistant, which served as “an integrated digital notes organizer for today’s high-tech, on-the-go students.” Informally, it was referred to as the “digital Trapper Keeper” that “held a virtually unlimited number, each with a virtually unlimited number of pages.” In reality, Classroom Assistant was a glorified text editor that read and wrote files to the 3.5" floppy disk that each student was supposed to carry around.

To be fair, Classroom Assistant did have several other modules in addition to the in-class note taking module. Granted, none of them had anything to do with the “information superhighway,” but no one seemed to notice or care, as the software did run on a computer, which meant pretty much the same thing. The module that everyone was excited about, however, was for test taking.

The test taking module was designed with two key goals in mind. First and foremost, it made teachers’ lives easier by “digitizing” the entire process and, secondly, it reduced cheating by making sure each student had a different copy of the test.

To create a new test, all teachers would have to do was write up a bunch of questions and then “deploy” them to each of the classroom’s PCs. Because Classroom Assistant wasn’t a networked product, deploying the tests involved taking the 3.5" disk containing the test questions and then loading the disk into each computer.

Taking the “digital” tests was even easier. A student would simply select the appropriate test from the “test library”, run through the randomly selected questions, and then instantly see her results. She’d then raise her hand, and the teacher could then write down the test results as seen on the screen.

At least, that was the theory. It took all of one test for the students to find a flaw in the system: if one received an unsatisfactory score, he could simply retake the test. Classroom Assistant didn’t bother recording how many times each test was taken. Sure, retaking the test several times was time-consuming, but generally worth the effort.

On the second test, students found a slightly easier workaround: they could simply run a different test. Since the results screen did not indicate which test was taken, all one needed to do was open up the “Test Taking Tutorial” test and pass it with flying colors.

When the third test rolled around, yet another workaround was uncovered: the results screen displayed only the percentage of questions answered correctly and a list of incorrectly answered questions. So long as they were able to answer the first question correctly, they’d get an easy 100%.

By the time the fourth test rolled around, the teachers had finally figured out a workaround of their own: they required that students enter the last question’s answer in front of them to ensure that it was the right test and actually the last question. Of course, students were already prepared with a counter-workaround: they could simply CTRL-C to DOS, navigate to the appropriate test folder, and then type in the following at the prompt:

ECHO CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC > answer.key

This would overwrite the particular test’s answer key, ensuring that C was, in fact, always the correct answer. Some students even patched together a batch file that overwrote all answer keys for all tests.

Shortly thereafter, River City High moved back to the paper and pencil tests.

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001489.html

On 27/08/08 At 02:58 PM

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_challenge_of_democracy/

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/101/

shewhohashope

In December 2007, over 2,000 American Muslims were asked what they would wish to say to the rest of the world. This is what they said. A music video for Kareem Salama's "A Land Called Paradise."

Produced and directed by Lena Khan. A MAS Media Foundation Production.

Kareem is American born with Egyptian parents whose music style is a result of his unique upbringing in Oklahoma with exposure to US western and Native American cultures.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Encrypted-For-Your-Security.aspx

"I have been helping a guy with a project," seebs wrote, "I wasn't originally involved, but when the three-month project was six-months late, I got called in to start on the other half. I still remember the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when the developer told me "all fields are varchar for simplicity...'"

"There's a database of users who can log in. Now, we all know that you always store the password encrypted, right? Perfect, it's stored as MD5. Here's the three relevant fields in the database:

username VARCHAR(32),
password VARCHAR(32),
password_md5 VARCHAR(32)

"...And yes," seebs continued, "the 'password' field holds the password in plaintext."

"Amazingly, the MD5 password is even calculated using a salt key. It's the MD5 hash of salt + name + password. The salt is the name of the company the project is for. Well, no. It's a misspelling of the name, with two typos out of six letters. Now, I'd have thought this might be intentional, except that two of the states a transaction can be in are CANCELED and CANCELLED_TX.

"The whole thing is like this. Several megabytes of code.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comics/20080827.jpg

tau_iota_mu_c

And yet the study reveals that almost 40 per cent of voters believe the Government should be doing more to prevent terrorism

Taxpayers' money we waste on excessive counter-terrorism measures is money we can't spend reducing the gap between white and indigenous health - or, if that doesn't appeal, on buying Olympic medals.
-- Ross Gittins

http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2040.html

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/~r/pa-mainsite/~3/375947892/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/8/27/woods-part-two/

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/D_eKb3gyOG0/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-08-27/

http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/080827.html

Home | Archive | Forums | Real Life Store | E-Mail | Deutsch

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080826.html

Stars come in bunches.

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1217

http://xkcd.com/468/

http://blackboxvoting.com/s9/index.php?/archives/247-The-Rand-Corporation-The-Day-After-When-Electronic-Voting-Machines-Fail.html

8 years later, we are still fighting for verified and transparent elections.  The Rand Corporation calls for accuracy in vote counting, transparency in the process, and serious audits.  Some quotable observations:

The Day After  

When Electronic Voting Machines Fail.  By Ian P. Cook.   Ian Cook is a RAND management systems analyst with expertise in technology, information, and innovation.

In any democracy, delivering on the promise that every vote should count depends fundamentally on the ability to count votes accurately....Readily apparent — and woefully unaddressed — is the fact that computerized...

http://blackboxvoting.com/s9/index.php?/archives/246-Ohio-voting-machines-Brunner-correct-to-cease-sleepover-practice.html

Continue reading "Ohio voting machines: "Brunner correct to cease ‘sleepover’ practice""

http://applegeeks.com/lite/index.php?aglitecomic=2008-08-27

http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/2008/08/mother.html

http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/2008/08/not-again.html