Satya's blog - 2004/10/

I want a Smart car!

http://www.zapworld.com/cars/smartCar.asp (dead link, new https://boxercycles.com/zap-electric-vehicles/ )

I wish it was cheaper, though :-(

Just sent Target this acidic note: "The target financial services web site (accessible via a link from www.target.com ) does not work with my browser: Firefox 1.0PR. It returns a blank page. Your web site is unusable to users of this web browser."

Figured out how to do X11 forwarding over ssh so that I can get meld (an X diff thingy) on dt to run on dt, display on gort, and then display on wintermutex (over VNC to gort): I put FordwardX11 yes and DynamicForward [portnum] in the .ssh/config file under host dt. Run VNC on wintermutex, tightvncserver on gort. In the VNC session, open an xterm (on gort) and then ssh to dt. Run X app of choice. Whee.

Years ago, sometime around 1999, I used to hang out on IRC. I was pretty green then, and so was the PC security field. Someone advocated not using a firewall unless you have stuff you really wnat to secure or unless you think you'll be attacked. Of course, now if you don't have a firewall you *will* be attacked -- your Windows machines will become zombies, and all your boxes will have their ssh ports tried several times a day.

Someone also said that telnet is insecure if you have a weak password. Now we know that telnet is insecure unless on a private subnet -- even then I wouldn't. Things sure have changed.

mod_auth_any now does caching and is super-cool!

It's an Apache webserver module to authenticate using "any" external program, such as the authClient aka webNIS.

We went to the Wendy's on Sam Rittenberg. Ordered a burger and fries at the drive-through, went to the window. Lady says "Sprite?" and I say no, fries. Get the packet, drive off. Before we exit the parking lot, find that the packet contains 1 burger, no fries. Went back in reverse and got the missing fries. Not a word of "oops, sorry" or anything. Grr. Not going there again. Wendy's is pissing me off.

Having just seen Return of the Jedi on DVD, I noted a couple of changes that I'm not sure anyone else has.. The weirdest one is when the Emperor's lightning arcs back over Vader -- you see flashes of his skeleton, cartoon-like!

Other change was, I swear Wedge says something like "Our proton torpedos won't even dent that thing" (or he might have said that in the first movie?) or maybe something like my missiles won't scratch it, and Lando tells him we'll take care of it, you go for the power regulator on the north tower. Well Lando just told him to go for the power regulator, there was nothing about missiles. I could be remembering wrong.

Having lost my internet connection this morning, I plugged Windows XP directly into the modem. A couple of hours later, the modem was plugged back into the router. When I looked at XP again, it had had 103 intrusion attempt alerts during that period. Sigh.

I have new pictures: my P51 Mustang is done, and there's a picture of the new Cooper River bridge and a picture of a random flower.

A while back I reported that the wings of my P51 were lopsided. Well I measured again, and they aren't. It's close to completion and I might attempt a test flight this weekend! Woot!

The WB is advertising "Fresh Gilmore Girls". Now, I'm pretty sure they mean "fresh episodes", but I interpret it as "fresh biscuits!!"

I got a few gmail emails today, which had domain key signature headers. Wondering what that is, I did a google search and found this:
http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys

which seems to be a signed analog of SPF. Hmm, they changed the name or I'm looking at the wrong web site. It used to be Sender Permitted From.

And I just saw the word qmail as a link in google search results. It seems that the words gmail and qmail are hard to tell apart in certain fonts, when underlined, due to the descender being obscured.

mod_auth_any was splattered with code like this:

#ifdef WITH_APACHE2
ap_log_rerror(APLOG_MARK, APLOG_ERR, status, r,
"error message: %s",error);
#else
ap_log_rerror(APLOG_MARK, APLOG_ERR, r,
"error message: %s",error);
#endif

I had lots of these calls, which I replaced with:

ap_log_rerror(APLOGERROR,"error message: %s",error);

and:

#ifdef WITH_APACHE2
#define APLOG_MARK, APLOG_ERR, status, r,
#else
#define APLOG_MARK, APLOG_ERR, r,
#endif

Much cleaner!

Changes in the 1977, SE and DVD versions: http://www.dvdanswers.com/sw1.html

I'm only on page 1, but so far the guy isn't all "oh my god, a pixel is different! it's all bad now!" which is a very good thing.

If I've said this before, it's worth mentioning again:

Read Kernighan and Pike's The Practice of Programming. If you're a programmer, or want to be one, you must read this book. At least skip the code and read the generalisations. It's worth it, trust me! This is the programming equivalent of The Mythical Man-month.

Read Kernighan and Ritchie's famous C book while you're at it. I don't remember the title; it's always called "K&R".

Hey, I spelled 'remember' correctly!

I drove tofu from his new place to Danielle's new place (it's been 3 weeks of moving here). When I showed up at tofu's place, Linux was there. He barked at me as usual. The tofu says "can he come with us" or something. I'm like uh, well hold him away from me.

After much cringing from me, a quiet Linux was finally installed in the back seat. I relaxed, drove them over the bridge, and Linux behaved all the way. I hope I didn't make him sick with my lurchy driving!

PS: Thanks for the X-Wing, tofu! Pictures eventually....

Yay I just switched to mutt!

So wintermutex's winver gives me: Version 5.1 (Build 2600.xpsp2.030422-1633: Service Pack 1)

Aside from the "2600", scary by itself, it says Service Pack 1 but then what's the xpsp2 in the middle? And the date seems to be March 22 2004 -- assuming that's a date.

Hmm. Kulin tells me that's xpsp, 2.030422. Oh, well.

This message brought to me by winver, the windows command I haven't used since ~1997 and had forgotten.

Stupid windows update icon is stuck, says "downloading updates 0%". windowsupdate website doesn't offer to give me SP2 either.

On the other hand, wintermute scared the heck out of me by spewing on port 137 via IP address 0.130, whereas wintermutex is 0.125. Scared gort, too (which is why I saw it in the packet log). Why is wintermute spewing?

(It scared me because I had forgotten I had booted wintermute -- and 0.130 is unfamiliar since I almost never use it. I suspected the laptop for a hwile there until I checked MAC addresses.)