The Ends of the Earth (Bruce Sterling)
Why do people bother with quantum cryptography? (and they do, companies exist that will supply QC products if you have the money). Wouldn't quantum entanglement cryptography achieve the same without a dedicated fiber link? Or are the practical problems with QEC really that bad?
Something to ask Pooh next time I see him.
Gary's shoe: Ewwwwwwwww! Really, really yuck.
But seriously, we rock.
Ok, so a few reviews that I've been meaning to get round to...
So this album has hit 4x platinum but I'm not quite sure why. I like it - quite a lot actually - but I'm still a little confused where this hidden hunger for `country' music has come from in the general population. Of course, it's not called country music because that doesn't sell but it sounds like country/folk music. It's certainly not jazz.
But for those who thought that Norah Jones was a one off, the copycats are proving them wrong. At the top of the charts at the moment is the second Norah Jones, this album and "20 Something".
Now, I think that Mrs Melua has a better voice than Mrs Jones. I know that's a pretty flammable statement in some places but I think that the recording on this album is just better than Come Away With Me. A bit like Road to Perdition - a very beautiful work and a welcome break between more exciting stuff. But no substitute.
It's fairly common knowledge to readers of IV that I'm quite a big fan of Greg Egan. In fact, a browse of his website shows that I've almost read every book he has in print.
Luminous is a collection of short stories and this actually means that you get a higher "cool idea" frequency than in some of his novels. One of the stories is pretty forgettable, but all the rest are classic Egan. A number of the stories hammer home the conclusions of a Strong AI belief - something that the world is going to have to come to grips with at some point (I believe so, as a Strong AIist, of course. Others don't). The title story is very Godel, Escher Bach dealing, as it does, with axiomatic systems.
I'm not going to write a list of the others here. Borrow the book off me if you want to find out. Highly recommended.
This is the first Iain M. Banks book that I've read. People have been mentioning him to me for ages and I finally read one on the train to (and from) Cardiff.
Now, this a political novel - not science fiction. It may be set in space with spaceships and the like - but that doesn't make it science fiction. Greg Egan is sci fi - this is space opera.
But as far as political novels go, it's very good. Almost excellent in fact. But I don't feel that I would have missed anything by not reading it (except for the best ship names in a book, ever). Something to read as the miles go by.
Well, Imperial College played host to the BBC in the form of Question Time on Thurs. (The one where a cabinet minister said "When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister"). Then we struck it - TV really isn't all that impressive. It looks ok to the edges of the camera's field of vision then it's just cables everywhere. The lighting rig was fairly impressive, but the sound was nothing to write home about.
I've a (telephone) interview with Google for a summer job this year. And congrats to Gary, Steve and Mike who've all sorted out jobs for when they leave Imperial.
In to College for 9am tomorrow. And don't forget that it's Mothers Day.
Ok, so at least Bram, Zooko and I prefer the sound of an MP3 reencoded into -1 quality OGG, than the original mp3. I'm not going to say which is which in Zooko's test. But the reencoded one sounds brighter to me.
But, just to prove that -1 quality isn't really any good here is:
The samples are random thanks to Python's random.shuffle function. All have been OGGed and back at qualities -1, 5 and 10.
Now, Zooko really should be able to tell the difference between the original and the -1 quality one. If nothing else, listen to the reverb on "Sing us a song".
See if you can put the samples in order of quality.
This is just ... well, almost amusing. But in that "laugh because you don't know what else to do" way [via WhiteRose, source]
WHAT do you give someone who's been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn't commit?
An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you're David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty's Pleasure in British prisons.
On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn't have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.
Though now I come to think about it, there's a prison near White City I believe, and £3000/year is a lot cheaper than what I'm paying now. I wonder if they would consider renting?
Fluffy BBC introduction if you don't know what IPRED is.
In red, the FFII (from here), and in blue, the text of the directive (taken from here
Anton Piller orders (secret court authorisations of raids for evidence by the plaintiff's agents)
Member States shall ensure that even before the commencement of proceedings on the merits of the case the competent judicial authorities may, on application by a party who has presented reasonably available evidence to support his claims that his intellectual property right has been infringed or is about to be infringed, order prompt and effective provisional measures to preserve relevant evidence in regard to the alleged infringement.
It's very unclear in the document as to who takes the action. Firstly, the /. crowd are wrong that this gives a right to corporate raids - you still need judicial authorities to sign off on it. We shall have to see how this is written into national law.
Mareva injunctions (freezing of assets, even before a case has been discussed in Court.
In cases of infringement committed on a commercial scale, ... the judicial authorities may order the precautionary seizure of the movable and immovable property of the alleged infringer, including the blocking of his bank accounts and other assets.
Member States shall ensure that the provisional measures referred to in paragraphs 1 and 1a may, in appropriate cases, be taken without the defendant having been heard.
The FFII seems to be perfectly correct on this one.
New powers to demand the disclosure of very extensive commercial and personal information.
Well, you can look at Article 9 yourself, it goes on a long while. But my reading of it is that the FFII is correct.
And the admissibility of denounciations by anonymous witnesses as court evidence.
Member States may take measures to protect witnesses' identity.
Right on again.
We'll have to fight at the national level now. I'm getting tired of this.
It's pretty wrong for me to ridicule specific DoC support requests here. But it's so tempting, (mentioning no names...). Today alone, I've already had one person ask if /usr/sbin/sendmail -t is going to work on our Windows ASP server (and there's no confusion here, he's absolutely aware that it's a Windows box).
And to round it off, someone asked if they should delete their root filesystem when trying to free up some space because it's several gigabytes big.
Oh boy.
I've been away for the weekend. So if you've not heard back from me in a couple of days - that's why. I'm going through my email now.
Friday night was spent stage teching Tokyo Dragons (pictures). MTV were filming this event, and they are meant to be a major band for some reason. I thought they were ok, but nothing special.
Though their bass guitarist did make his own amp, so they gain credits for that.
These are predictions from a "leaked Pentagon report" that were published in The Observer today (news section, page 3).
I just want them here so I can look back in a few years time.
Yes, I've got 32. I'll be in tomorrow morning.
Well, a kernel upgrade of the Union server on Tuesday showed that 2.4.25's XFS support is incomplete. It contains some of XFS, but not enough to actually get a working server (I need ACL support at least). And I can't find patches to add the missing bits to 2.4.25 either. Bugger.
The medic's play (Alice in Wonderland) on in the UCH at the moment is very good. Go see it tonight (£6) or tomorrow (£7) starting at 7:30 (ish).
Last night's band night with Natascha Sohl went very well. She's very good and my favorite band that we've worked with so far. Proper control of the lighting by Steve meant that it looked very good too.
And we're doing it all again tomorrow, but with three bands and (at least) one film crew. That includes three drum kits that we've got to handle somehow. And I've got other commitments for part of tomorrow night.
Also, I'm on Orkut now. Mail me if you need an introduction.
(Though I'm home this weekend (and Monday) so I've very little email access.)
And tonight was going to be my night off and the first time I haven't been doing something in the Union this week. But the Medic's director just phoned so I'm going to help them now... oh well.
New kernel bug. All upgrade to 2.4.25 or 2.6.3. DoC backend webserver compiling now and will be rebooted in a minute. Union server waiting for GR patch against 2.4.25.
Ok, a slightly political entry today...
Firstly, I tip my hat to the people behind a new scholarship created for whites only. And I hope it enrages every racist black organisation simply because I want to see them defend their black only scholarships and attack this at the same time. A wonderful example of why racism by white people is racist and racism by black people is `positive action'.
Next up, a Guardian article today (page 3): Goodbye ecstasy, hello 5-Meo-DMT. It's only in their paper and beta-test editions, so no link I'm afraid.
It discusses the increasing use of chemicals that are legal in the US, but illegal here, such as 5-MeO-[DMT|DiPT] and 2C-[B|I]. Now these chemicals are still fairly rare and I've never even heard of anyone taking them. (But don't confuse 5-MeO-DMT with regular N,N-DMT, which is much older and common).
The rapid growth in the transatlantic online trade in such chemicals has been fueled by international differences over legality. While Britain has outlawed all of these drugs under an amendment to the Misuse Of Drugs Act in February 2002 they remain legal in most other countries, including the majority of EU member states. Even in the US, despite some of the most draconian anti-drug laws in the world, the bulk of research chemicals are legal to manufacture, sell, possess and consume.
The leading research chemical sites compete openly to offer the purest product, the best customer service, the fastest deliveries and the lowest prices. Sophisticated e-commerce technology, electronic payment systems and next day courier services guarantee swift, effortless "one-click" transactions
The EU recently recommended that member states ban 2C-I as a matter of urgency, although they turned up no evidence of large-scale manufacture. The police, however, were quick to sound the alarm. "The chemicals to make this are available and it can be made pretty much anywhere," a source said.
Nowhere have we had the slightest justification of the banning of these chemicals. It's not even discussed - they don't even try to give reasons. We have now reached the point where "drugs are baadd" is an axion of our society.
I'm perfectly free to go jump out of a plane. A totally unconstructive, reckless act that serves no end but by own pleasure. People who trek across the Arctic are heros. Those who die are tragic.
Those who ingest 2,5-Dimethoxy-4-Iodophenethylamine are criminals and those who die are used to justify the banning of it. Although, it seems, we don't even need that any more.
Now, I'm not saying that experimenting with these drugs is a good idea. Frankly, experimenting with new drugs is pretty damm stupid as far as I'm concerned. But I'm not going to stop anyone else from trying it.
And what effect does banning every psychoactive chemical have on research? Most research grant boards won't go near these areas. It's just not worth the bother and we don't know what damage this is doing to medical knowledge because we won't even investigate it.
Next time you're preached to about the dangers of drugs. Just wonder to yourself about how many of those dangers are caused by the prohibition that they are used to justify. Better yet, wonder out loud because that's either called circular reasoning or bullshit depending on your company.
If you didn't see this on /., you really should read it: Economist: I get a kick out of you
I've written an exploit for the XFree vunl that has been doing the rounds for my talk on Tuesday. (That I've got to write this weekend).
Next Tuesday is sysadmin security and the week after is programming security. (1 o'clock, 308/311). I'll be pulling the exploit apart in the second of them. It's a little different than the usual kiddie exploits because X isn't suid on DoC systems.
And Silwood still haven't told me if they'll upgrade their power supply for the PhySoc Summer Ball, and I can't confirm any hires really until I know what I'm doing about that.
And the ICU Summer Ball may be off. East meet West lost money, I'm pretty sure that International Night did too.
Oh, wonderful. What a beautiful morning on which we find critical vulnerabilities in the following:
Well, the first set of patches for GCC 3.5 have gone into the mm kernel tree so we can start looking forward to the release of 3.4 soon.
The change log is here, and I'd like to highlight a few points:
Firstly, precompiled headers. This could be a huge gain for large compile runs (KDE anyone?). Basically the compiler can preprocess C/C++ headers and so not have to repeatedly compile them for each unit (read .c or .cc file). Quoting from a snapshot gcc manual (raw texi docs):
To create a precompiled header file, simply compile it as you would any other file, if necessary using the @option{-x} option to make the driver treat it as a C or C++ header file. You will probably want to use a tool like @command{make} to keep the precompiled header up-to-date when the headers it contains change.
A precompiled header file will be searched for when @code{#include} is seen in the compilation. As it searches for the included file (@pxref{Search Path,,Search Path,cpp,The C Preprocessor}) the compiler looks for a precompiled header in each directory just before it looks for the include file in that directory. The name searched for is the name specified in the @code{#include} with @samp{.gch} appended. If the precompiled header file can't be used, it is ignored.
For instance, if you have @code{#include "all.h"}, and you have @file{all.h.gch} in the same directory as @file{all.h}, then the precompiled header file will be used if possible, and the original header will be used otherwise.
If you need to precompile the same header file for different languages, targets, or compiler options, you can instead make a @emph{directory} named like @file{all.h.gch}, and put each precompiled header in the directory. (It doesn't matter what you call the files in the directory, every precompiled header in the directory will be considered.) The first precompiled header encountered in the directory that is valid for this compilation will be used; they're searched in no particular order.
A precompiled header can't be used once the first C token is seen. You can have preprocessor directives before a precompiled header; you can even include a precompiled header from inside another header, so long as there are no C tokens before the @code{#include}.
The precompiled header file must be produced by the same compiler version and configuration as the current compilation is using. The easiest way to guarantee this is to use the same compiler binary for creating and using precompiled headers.
Any macros defined before the precompiled header (including with @option{-D}) must either be defined in the same way as when the precompiled header was generated, or must not affect the precompiled header, which usually means that the they don't appear in the precompiled header at all.
Next up, several GCCisms have been removed. This is a shame as I've been known to use the first two of these in some code (that, frankly, wasn't portable anyway).
(maybe the C standard will include these someday. Unfortunately, the GCC people don't give a rational for removing them.)
We also have a new unit-at-a-time compilation system for C. This allows inter-procedural optimisations. This is mostly useful for optimising static functions as GCC can now change the calling-convention for these and so forth.
And we have make profiledbootstrap which uses the profile-feedback code from 3.3 (which is much improved in 3.4) when building the compiler. GCC claims "an 11% speedup on -O0 and a 7.5% speedup on -O2" (i386, building C++).
Now, the question is, am I brave enough to run a snapshot? Probably not I'm afraid.
Well, Oskar can rest easy, Joel told me to bugger off.
And, it seems, censorship is once again, the answer to everything these days.
| / | Root |
| Alternate | The Weird and Wonderful |
| Backlinks | What are backlinks |
| John Gilmore | What's Wrong with Copy Protection |
| Archives | Blog Archives |
| One | Archive 1 |
| Two | Archive 2 |
| Three | Archive 3 |
| Four | Archive 4 |
| Five | Archive 5 |
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| Nineteen | Archive 19 |
| Twenty | Archive 20 |
| Twenty One | Archive 21 |
| Twenty Two | Archive 22 |
| Twenty Three | Archive 23 |
| Twenty Four | Archive 24 |
| Twenty Five | Archive 25 |
| Twenty Six | Archive 26 |
| Twenty Seven | Archive 27 |
| Twenty Eight | Archive 28 |
| Twenty Nine | Archive 29 |
| Photos | Poor People Caught on Film |
| Jack and the Beanstalk | Jack and the Beanstalk |
| RIP Scan | Results of a Stage Scan Fire |
| Yosemite | Yosemite National Park |
| Projects | Incomplete things from the lab |
| Seagull's Bane | Linux Automounter |
| bttrackd | BitTorrent Tracker |
| CAPTCHA | CAPTCHA CGI script |
| Conserv | Console Serving |
| Deerpark | Using Tor with Firefox/1.1 (Deerpark) |
| DNSFix | Fixing DNS |
| Xovers | XTA Crossover Control |
| IAFS | Archive Org Storage |
| JBIG2 | JBIG2 Encoder |
| Verify | PGP Key Verifier |
| MaxFlow | Maximal Flow in Python |
| PyBloom | Bloom Filters in Python |
| pyGnuTLS | Python wrapping of GnuTLS |
| Sxmap | Apache SuEXEC Map |
| Hellard | Union Server Notes |
| Recordings | Free recordings |
| ICSM Choir | St Paul's Church |
| School | Ancient School Stuff |
| Writings | Who knows |
| Cap Systems | Capability Systems |
| Intro | Introduction to me |
| Suprema | JMC2 Group Project |
| MP Letters | Letters I've written to my MP |
| Sound | Sound With Dramsoc |
| SyncThreading | The wonders of user-land threads |
