Category: Software

Virtual Suicide Bombing

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Clive Thompson plays Halo 3 online. Because he has a life, and does not spend 10-20 hours a day on line, his skills, and his power are limited.

However, he has found a way to even the scales:

.…

Whenever I find myself under attack by a wildly superior player, I stop trying to duck and avoid their fire. Instead, I turn around and run straight at them. I know that by doing so, I’m only making it easier for them to shoot me — and thus I’m marching straight into the jaws of death. Indeed, I can usually see my health meter rapidly shrinking to zero.

But at the last second, before I die, I’ll whip out a sticky plasma grenade — and throw it at them. Because I’ve run up so close, I almost always hit my opponent successfully. I’ll die — but he’ll die too, a few seconds later when the grenade goes off. (When you pull off the trick, the game pops up a little dialog box noting that you killed someone “from beyond the grave.”)

It was after pulling this maneuver a couple of dozen times that it suddenly hit me: I had, quite unconsciously, adopted the tactics of a suicide bomber — or a kamikaze pilot.

….

What is interesting here is that the dynamic is pretty much identical to those of an insurgency. While the stakes are clearly less, no one is actually dying, the power dynamics are the same, and so are the resulting tactics.

AT&T Created a Language to Do Mass Surveillance

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Seriously, if there is a group of people with their tongues more firmly up the rectum of the state security apparatus than AT&T, I would surprised.

They have gone so far as inventing a purpose built language for mass-surveillance. I’ve said it a number of times, don’t use AT&T, they suck wet farts from dead pigeons.

According the article, this was originally developed to find sales leads, and it was developed well before 911. They want to hoover all of our data, and sell it to the highest bidder.

Here is a sort of a schematic of its function:

Here is some sample code:

#include “ipRec.hh”
#include “ihash.h”

hash_table *ofInterest;

int inSet (ipPacket_t * p)
{
if (hash_get (ofInterest, p->source.hash_value) == 1)
return 1;
if (hash_get (ofInterest, p->dest.hash_value) == 1)
return 1;
return 0;
}
void sig_main (ipAddr_s addrs < l:>,
ipPacket_s packets < p:>)
{
/* code to set up hash table */
ofInterest = hash_empty ();
iterate
(over addrs) {
event (ipAddr_t * addr) {
if (hash_insert (ofInterest, addr->hash_value, 1) < 0)
}
}
/* code to select packets */
iterate
(over packets
filteredby inSet)
{
event (ipPacket_t * p)
{
printPacketInfo (p);
}
};
}

Geeky Tech Content: The iPhone Makes Windows Look Like Fort Knox

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OMFG!!!! Apple® has come out with a system that is less secure than Windows.

The iPhone®, which runs an Apple® version of Unix® runs everything as root.

1) Every process runs as root. MobileSafari, MobileMail, even the Calculator, all run with full root privileges. Any security flaw in any iPhone application can lead to a complete system compromise. A rootkit takes on a whole new meaning when the attacker has access to the camera, microphone, contact list, and phone hardware. Couple this with “always-on” internet access over EDGE and you have a perfect spying device.

So, unlike your home computer, this is more vulnerable, and it can be set to listen in and photograph you with a remote compromise.

This is the NSA’s wet dream, you’ve bugged yourself.

Schadenfreude, Silicon Valley Rat Bastard Edition

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SCO has filed bankruptcy.

Now that they have lost their bogus Unix claims, and owe back royalties, they are running to the bankruptcy court. I just hope that the court looks into the ties between SCO and Microflaccid™, because it’s clear that they were induced by Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and their Evil Minions™ to do this in order to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about Linux.

iPhones Crash WiFi Network at Duke.

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It appears that a small number of iPhones took down the routers at Duke University.

By a small number, it might have been as few as two.

The built-in 802.11b/g adapters on several iPhones periodically flood sections of the Durham, N.C. school’s pervasive wireless LAN with MAC address requests, temporarily knocking out anywhere from a dozen to 30 wireless access points at a time. The campus network staff is talking with Cisco, the main WLAN provider, and have opened a help desk ticket with Apple. But so far, the precise cause of the problem remains unknown.

That’s because the misbehaving iPhones flood the access points with up to 18,000 address requests per second, nearly 10Mbps of bandwidth, and monopolizing the AP’s airtime.

Does not play well with others.

Kudos to IBM

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Words I never thought I’d say.

IBM has relinquished a significant portion of its patent portfolio to open source projects.

Not only that, they were smart about it:

There is an exception to the grant of access to the technology: it is closed to anyone taking legal action to block further interoperability. IBM will not extend the access to anyone who is suing someone else over patents necessary for interoperability in the standards to which this technology relates.

This is one serious $%#@ you to Microsoft.

Developers Moving Away from Windows?

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One of the major draws of Windows is that everyone in the development community feels that they have to do Windows.

This advantage is decreasing.

Developers diss Windows client
By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco
Going niche

The Windows client hegemony is breaking down with developers targeting different operating systems and multiple client devices.

The latest Evans Data Corp poll of North American developers found 12 per cent fewer building applications for Windows than a year ago.

….