End the War on Freedom - Computers

Clipperz: Anatomy of a zero-knowledge web application

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:23:25 -0500

Clipperz hosts an online password manager that, according to them, you don't have to trust with your private information, since it's all encrypted in your web browser before being sent to and stored on their server. This article talks about the general architecture. Security is provided by their open source JavaScript Crypto Library. Their service is free, and you need only a username and password to get started. Your password is never sent to their server, and they cannot recover it. You can save your private information on your machine, read-only, to make disconnected access possible. I feel no need for an on-line password manager at present, Yojimbo works well for me, but I look forward to future zero-knowledge web applications. Very cool idea.

There's also Clipperz Community Edition, an open source version of the password manager server that you can run on your own web site, with just PHP 5 and MySQL.

Eric S. Raymond Returns to the Blogosphere

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:41:36 -0500

Armed and Dangerous, the blog of Eric S. Raymond, has been inactive since June 12, 2006. ESR made a number of posts over the last few days, beginning with the linked post. He also has three posts on the Heller decision: A Victory for Civil Rights, Civil Disobedience, and The Heller ruling and the 2008 elections. Welcome back, Eric!

From Civil Disobedience, a report of Eric's visit to his local chief of police:

Quote:

I told him that I had been intending to speak with him for several weeks, to inform him that I intend to begin exercising my right to open carry of a firearm (quite legal in Pennsylvania and in most other states as well). I explained that I thought it best he and the local police knew of this in advance in order to avoid any unfortunate misunderstandings. See opencarry.org for background on this fast-growing form of civil-rights activism.

I also told him that, in the wake of the Heller ruling, I intend at some future point to deliberately violate the Pennsylvania state law forbidding concealed carry without a state-issued permit. The Heller ruling does not enumerate those among permissible restrictions, and I would be happy to be PA’s test case on this point. As a citizen of the United States (I explained) I believe I have not only the right but the affirmative duty to challenge unjust and unconstitutional laws; and that since the founders of the U.S. pledged their lives and fortunes and sacred honor to sign the Declaration of Independence, merely risking imprisonment to challenge this law seems to me no more than my duty.

Git Magic

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:29:16 -0500

Ben Lynn has a pretty good practical introduction to using the Git version control system. Only interesting if you write software. I use Git for my personal projects. The companies I work for currently use Subversion. I started using Git after watching this video of Linus Torvalds, Git's creator, and the creator and chief maintainer of the Linux kernel, talking about it at Google. [music]

Shiny New Apple Airport Express Wifi Modem

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 09:00:56 -0600

Yesterday, I received a shiny new Apple Airport™ Express wifi modem. It took ten minutes from unboxing to network working again, including the holes in the firewall for the ports I let through. Works good, so far. Time will tell about reliability. Unboxing pr0n at imacpr0n.com/airport. The photo below shows the white Airport below the DSL modem the phone company gave me, with a nest of cables and power cords and the view from my house in the background.

PGP Desktop 9.7

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 06:14:04 -0600

PGP Desktop 9.7 has been released. I've been without PGP since I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard"), using a command line version of GnuPG when I need to encrypt or decrypt something. 9.7 works in Leopard. Release notes here. Trial version available for download here, after giving them your full contact info. One day, when I have a spare $100, I'll buy a copy, but for now, I'll keep using the free trial. It works for what I need.

Terabyte Thumb Drives Made Possible by Nanotech Memory

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 03:57:06 -0500

Alexis Madrigal at Wired - a team led by Michael Kozicki, at Arizona State's Center for Applied Nanoionics, has developed a new type of solid-state memory, able to store a terabyte on a thumb drive, with much lower power than current flash memory. Expect the first prototypes in 18 months. [wired]

Check 1 failed. Can't run Skype

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 09:13:33 -0500

When I tried to run Skype today on my Macintosh, nothing happenned. Looking in the Console log, I found this cryptic message:

Check 1 failed. Can't run Skype

Only found one Google hit, and it wasn't helpful. Tried renaming Google preferences out of the way (in Mac OS X, those are the "~/Library/Preferences/com.skype.skype.plist" file and the "~/Library/Application Support/Skype" directory). Same thing. Reinstalled Skype by dragging from the distribution DMG to my Applications folder and clicking "Yes" on the overwrite query dialog. Back in business. Don't know why it happenned, but that fixed it.

iPhone Reverse Polish Calculator

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 16:32:24 -0500

billstclair.com/calc.html is a Reverse Polish calculator for the iPhone. I found the code for this with a Google search, and reformatted it for the small screen. Looks funny in a regular browser, but is just the right size on my iPhone. Scroll down for trig functions, the rest of the machine state, and a calculation record.

ifiMob

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:31:45 -0500

ifiMob.org introduces an idea prompted by the iPhone. Any iPhone owner who wanted to could be the disk jockey of his own radio channel. He could play music, talk, sing, whatever. Anybody with the ifiMob software could see all the channels within wifi range, and tune in to any one. Channels that enable it would allow listeners to talk, too. You could squelch talkers you don't like, from just your soundscape. The channel list could show its music's pulsing beat, so that you could pick a channel by the rhythm of its dancers.

I hope Apple opens up the iPhone enough to make this idea possible. I hope somebody writes the software. I want to use it.

BitTorrent Inc. Acquires µTorrent

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:01:54 -0600

Michael Calore at Wired - uTorrent is my favorite BitTorrent client, by a mile, but since I've been using Linux, and now OSX, as my daily computing environment, I can't use it. They're saying that they're going to port it to both. Yay! Slashdot discussion. Slyck News story. The announcement at uTorrent's forum was met with much derision from current uTorrent users. Just fear, I think. Hopefully unfounded. [/.]

Choose RELAX Now

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 03:28:51 -0600

Tim Bray - Every time I've looked at an XSD for describing an XML schema, I've felt repelled, as if by a millimeter wave weapon. Tim Bray, and Eliotte Rusty Harold, and others linked from Mr. Bray's post, agree, that RELAX NG is a better schema description language. Slashdot discussion. [/.]

iMac Pr0n

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 20:14:36 -0600

iMacPr0n.com is my new web site for collecting pictures of my new iMac (that's eye, em, ay, see, pee, are, zero, en). Hopefully, it will eventually contain pictures of other people's iMacs, too. I don't actually have my new iMac yet, but I ordered it today, and expect to receive it next week or the week after. Right now, the site contains some text, a screen shot of my invoice, and pictures of the iLugger carrying case I got for the iMac. I'll make another post here after I post the iMac photos.

Scratching the Linux Itch with an OSX VM

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 06:43:41 -0600

MacWindows.com has a list of emulators for running Windoze and Linux on OSX and running OSX on Windoze. Last night, I bought iEmulator, an OSX repackaging of Fabrice Bellard's Qemu, which I've gotten to know and love in Windows and Puppy Linux. It ran Puppy Linux 2.12 beta without a hitch on my son's MacBook, though it was no speed daemon. They probably didn't convert kqemu, which makes a big speed difference. I'll probably eventually buy Parallels Desktop. I'll certainly download it and get a free 15-day evaluation key, as soon as I get my new iMac, which will be soon.

TiddlyWiki

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 06:57:14 -0600

Jeremy Ruston has created a new (to me) way to maintain a web site. It brings wikis and weblogs into the Ajax / Web 2.0 world. It stores an entire web site in a single HTML file, using JavaScript for navigation and editing. Trés cool! My description doesn't do it justice. Play with it yourself: TiddlyWiki.com.

tiddlyspot provides free TiddlyWiki hosting. I started a site there: The Frontierist.

Though it's really neat to store an entire web site in one file, the problem is that that file starts out pretty big (over 200K), and gets bigger as you add content. There is discussion on separating the code from the data, and BidiX has created a DownloadService which does just this, with a web backend to allow saving directly to the web (tiddlyspot uses an earlier version of that backend, which saves the whole-thing-in-one-file to the web).

Wiki on a Stick is a minimalist implementation of this idea, with only 50K of script in the initial file. I found TiddlyWiki in the Wiki on a Stick source. Thanks to Kenneth Hensley (klhrevolutionist) for the link.

The Word on Warranties: Don’t Bother

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 06:36:57 -0600

David S. Joachim at The New York Times - those manufacturers extended warranties that give you three years of coverage instead of the usual one year aren't worth it, says Mr. Joachim. [cafe]

Quote:

Because the insurance market is competitive and policies can be easily compared, insurance companies generally post profits in the 15 percent range, while electronics retailers generate margins as high as 80 percent on warranties, Mr. Housser said. That is a sign that the products they sell rarely break down during the warranty periods, making warranties a great deal for the seller but a bad deal for the buyer.

Indeed, Mr. Housser said, in many cases electronics retailers make almost no profit on the goods they sell; they make almost all of it on the sale of extended warranties. That may explain why salespeople put so much emphasis on warranties during their sales pitches, he and other experts say.

...

[Todd Marks of Comsumer Reports] calls a warranty on an item like this a “sucker’s bet.” “You’re betting that one, the product will break, and two, that it will break in the second or third year,” after a typical manufacturer’s warranty expires, Mr. Marks said. “And three, you’re betting that the cost of repair or replacement will exceed the cost of the warranty.”