Passwords

Oct. 30th, 2008 07:30 am
handslive: (Default)
[Edited:  To fix the math errors.  Not that anyone will notice, I suppose.  And it took me 2 weeks to get around to doing it.  Procrastinate much?]

Two things happened in the last month to make me think about passwords.  The first was an issue at work where I was asked to describe in some technical detail how hard or easy it would be to guess a single person's password if I had access to the password hash stored in the application's database.  The second was that I screwed up when changing my password in KeePass and had to give some thought to whether I could recover it and how.

Boring details )
handslive: (Default)
A month ago, I had cause to go back and look for an early post on this LJ.  Really early, like the first year or something.  What I thought I'd use this for then is different than what I ended up using it for and eventually all my uses for it dribbled out.  Sort of.  I wouldn't say I have no use for it.  I read a lot of other people's posts, even though I respond rarely.

I used to write about work, but now writing about work would mean anonymizing some stuff and dancing around some things and hand waving to distract the audience.  It's really not worth the effort.  I love the work I'm doing right now.  It has its moments of humour, banging my head into the desk, heavy thinking, and direction setting.  And it's not that I'm working on the super secret or anything.  But I haven't felt comfortable writing about it.  I'm starting think I should  find some things to write about it, so we'll see I guess.

I used to write about writing and music.  But I haven't written any original poetry in like two years or more.  I haven't sent any work out to beg to be published in that time either.  I still beat on the piano, but frankly I was trying to find a way to record what I was doing and share that.  I'm not happy with my slapdash attempts, though.  And I'm much slower about new stuff (and have been slower for a long long time) than I was when I started out.

I used to write about training, but.  Hmm.  Our arrangement with the U here fell apart when the rec department took a new direction in the fall.  There's been an internal split of sorts over how that happened.  It's very up in the air in some regards now.  I got bronchitis in late Feb and, after going to maybe two or three classes, got a nasty cold at the start of April and am only thinking of heading back again this coming week.  So, training is teh suxxor.

I'm going to try to post more often.  May the powers that be help you.  We'll see how it goes.
handslive: (coding)
As part of the reading I'm doing for my GCIH re-certification, I've been reading about software that tries to detect whether it's running on a real machine or on a virtual machine.  This makes me think about how a person might try to detect whether the world is real or virtual, not philosophically but in practical terms assuming some limitations on the part of the software.

There are 4 common techniques used today by malicious software to detect virtual machines and I'm going to try to restate them as though they applied to virtual worlds:

  • Look for artifacts in the physical environment (in software, they refer to processes, file system, or operating system registry)
  • Look for artifacts in the world's awareness of itself (in software, they refer to memory, but I think for this proposition we could mean linkages between separate "physical" things that either should be there and aren't or vice versa)
  • Look for physical things that are clearly identified as only belonging to virtual environments (in software, they refer to virtual hardware, like virtual network cards that always have the same set of MAC addresses)
  • Look for virtual environment specific features or capabilities that don't work in the real environment (in software, they refer to processor instructions that only work in the virtual machine or that work a specific way in the virtual machine)
In the Matrix, 3 of these things are clearly present to tell you that the environment is virtual.  The reference to 'deja vu' in the movie is clearly an artifact of the Matrix.  The agents are clearly only present in virtual environments.  And the abilities of both agents and resistance fighters within the environment would clearly not exist outside of that environment.  Which is fine in terms of thinking about the Matrix, but the resistance knows they're going into the Matrix each time and essentially has exploit code that bootstraps them when they connect.  Ordinary people are indoctrinated or reprogrammed or removed as necessary, but these guys always start with elevated privileges.

This led me to think about a group of people whose job is to hop through virtual worlds.  They're indoctrinated during loading each time and must work out from scratch that the world is virtual and how to hack the world.  So a key factor in the story is not only how to tell that it's virtual, but providing training that will survive indoctrination and give them the tools they need.  The necessary assumption is that at least some virtual worlds are not consensual places.  And they don't start out with elevated privileges.  They need to hack from the inside to get those.

[Edited to add:] The more I think about it, the more it seems like you'd want hard science folks looking at things from the inside.  Looking for artifacts seems on the face of it to be one of the easiest ways, even if it's something goofy like rounding in some physical constant or rounding errors that crop up in certain interactions.  What if quantum entanglement (or a lack of it) were a sign that the environment was virtual?  Would we be able to detect that the "universe" was losing seconds periodically using an atomic clock?  (That might be a sign that we were running against another universe's clock.)  What biological processes might be simplified at the molecular level or higher up (and how would it be detected)?
handslive: (playing2)
This post requires explanation, or possibly a time line.  Boing boing linked to a John Scalzi post of Dec 18th.  This post includes a YouTube link to a music video.  Imagine that the Beatles had written and performed Stairway to Heaven in the mid 60s.

That made me laugh (also -- head: spinning).  But if you go down the list of comments in the Scalzi blog post, there's Ozzy Osbourne and Slash performing In My Life.  Damn.  There's a link to Beatallica, who I think I'd heard of but never heard.  Problem solved.

Then there's sort of a jackpot comment in the original blog post with Scalzi replying to someone else.  A link to 101 versions of Stairway to Heaven.  You'll need to roll sanity checks on some of these.  I haven't listened to all of them, but this one caught my ear, by Dixie Power Trio.

I mentioned this to a guy at work (all of it).  When I mentioned Dixie Power Trio, he said, "Have you heard Hayseed Dixie?"  So, now we get to the real purpose of this post.  If you've listened to 70s and 80s metal and never heard of these guys, I'm about to injure your brain.

Highway to Hell (originally by AC/DC)
Ace of Spades (originally by Motorhead)
Walk This Way (originally by Aerosmith)
Hells Bells (originally by AC/DC)
War Pigs (originally by Black Sabbath)
Dirty Deeds (originally by AC/DC)
Black Dog (originally by Led Zeppelin)

Old news

Nov. 18th, 2007 09:29 pm
handslive: (Default)

Guess what I bought?
Originally uploaded by HandsLive
Well, old for most of the people on my flist anyway. I bought something about 3 weeks ago. Batteries included.
handslive: (hiking)

Lake Oesa Trail
Originally uploaded by HandsLive
Many of you may already be aware that our hiking trip was a bit short due to weather. I'm not really disappointed. We booked optimistically and we still got two very nice hikes in.

I have several pictures from the trip that are, um, green. I mean they look like I used a green filter to take them or something. Even the rock looks green. Clearly I should have done like [personal profile] nlindq  and set the white balance manually on those shots. I may play with them in Gimp and see what I can do.

In the meantime, there are 83 photos on Flickr.

I should probably also add that the temperature was a very reasonable 7 C or so in most of these pictures.  Yes, it was snowing in several of these pictures, but it was actually nice hiking.
handslive: (Default)
I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago.

Duelling Shamisen Lutes

Maybe you have to like banjo to like this, but I like it.  :-)
handslive: (coding)
I have a suspicion that few people on my flist read Warren Ellis' site with any regularity.  I can't say I blame you.  Your tolerance for disturbing media has to be pretty high.  Still, every now and then...

I saw the first of these clips years ago.  And maybe [livejournal.com profile] greenjavatroll will remember seeing it at one of [livejournal.com profile] canadian_worm's LAN parties.

Rare Exports

It turns out that they made a sequel a couple of years ago.

Rare Exports - Safety Instructions

It may not be the season, but they're worth it.  I'd love to know what swear word the guy uses in the safety instructions section.  But it probably wouldn't make any sense to me.
handslive: (Default)
Look at this t-shirt.  This especially means [livejournal.com profile] greenjavatroll since [livejournal.com profile] purplejavatroll has already seen it.

The artist in question has an LJ, [livejournal.com profile] ursulav, and a site with many other fine works of art: Metal and Magic.

(Thank you, Mr. Ellis.)
handslive: (writing)
I think I like the summary format better, but it does mean setting a regular time to update. So far, I'm sucking on that part. Here's hoping I didn't miss anything.


  • Blindsight - Peter Watts

  • Banner of Souls - Liz Williams

  • Maelstrom - Peter Watts

  • The Two Minute Rule - Robert Crais

  • The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant - Michael Tremblay

  • The Forgotten Man - Robert Crais



Blindsight is probably my favourite hard-sf book now. An absolutely fascinating read. I'm enjoying the Rifters series, but I doubt it's going to alter my opinion. I used to rave about Alastair Reynolds and I still do, but this guy has (no lie) changed the way I look at the world. Maelstrom was very good. Although some of the description of software was a little "huh?", I think he nailed some concepts very well. What I really liked was that he had a description of a bio-authentication mechanism that sounded workable and then described a serious security flaw with it.

Banner of Souls was a lot of fun. I really like Liz William's stuff.

The Two Minute Rule and The Forgotten Man were accidental finds at Chapters while I was just browsing. Robert Crais is still one of my favourites for short, light, guilty reading.

The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant is the book club book.

[Update]: I forgot about this one:

Monster Island - David Wellington

Reading this book was both something I'd been planning to do anyway and also an experiment in reading on the new PDA/cellphone. Works like a charm, by the way. The book wasn't too shabby either.
handslive: (Default)
Thank you, Boing Boing for making the rest of my night.

Twirl-a-squirrel
handslive: (Default)
I fell asleep on the bus on my ride home today.  This is not an uncommon occurrence.  However, today the woman sitting behind me gave me a shake and said, "Isn't this where you usually get off?"

Okay, that's a little embarassing.

Then the guy sitting a couple of seats over, who also gets off at my stop, said, "Don't worry.  I usually give him a little bump when I get off and he wakes right up and gets off, too."

He asked me if I felt better knowing people were looking out for me.  I pretended to be too groggy to reply.
handslive: (writing)
I liked this book a lot.  It's probably a tie between this book and Eastern Standard Tribe as to which one of his novels I like best, but this one has more deep weirdness so it probably wins out.  I can imagine someone criticizing the two competing storylines of wireless access and family trouble, but I feel it works as planned for a couple of reasons.  First, it gave me a much deeper connection to the community around Alan when the two storylines finally begin to cross and intermingle.  Second, it grounds the weirdness in fundamental ways.

And, frankly, I'm thinking seriously about taking the whole bit where they go and talk to Lyman at Bell's headquarters, quoting that, and e-mailing it to folks at work.

Way behind

Feb. 5th, 2007 06:28 pm
handslive: (writing)
Ouch.  It's February and I haven't posted one word about what I've been reading.

January 2007 - Fantasy & Science Fiction
Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower - Book 5) - Stephen King
February 2007 - Fantasy & Science Fiction
Ysabel - Guy Gavriel Kay
Starfish - Peter Watts
Nine Layers of Sky - Liz Williams
Camouflage - Joe Haldeman

The February F&SF featured the last story by John Morressy from the backlog of material they had.  I'm going to miss his stories a lot.

Wolves was okay, but King is tying together fictional and "real" (from the character's perspective) universes here and I'm not sure it'll all work out in the end.  And of course razor frisbee.

Ysabel was excellent.  And now I feel a need to read some previous books by Kay.  No reason.

Starfish was my first "holy fuck!" book of the year.  By that I mean both "Why haven't I read all of Peter Watts stuff already?  Who is this guy?!" and also "Crap!  The author just removed the top of my head with the power of his mind!"

Sky was good.  The ending wasn't quite what I imagined, but that's a good thing.

Camouflage was very good.  It's too bad I'd so recently read some Peter Watts stuff.  I enjoy Haldeman, but I'm geeking out about Watts just now and this book features the weird, the ocean, and marine biologists.  Sorry, but no contest.

Also, I want to go over my list from last year and highlight things for myself.
handslive: (playing2)
You can blame BoingBoing.  If this doesn't get you in the mood for the holidays, you can always switch to death metal.

Evil Christmas Carols 1
Evil Christmas Carols 2
handslive: (writing)
This was a first novel?  Wow.

Okay, actually I can tell in a few very minor places that this is a first novel (eg. "impossibly fast" gets used a fair bit, like two or three times in a single fight scene), but I loved this book.  It twists and turns; it amazes; it amuses; it scared the crap out of me once or twice.

Sadly, I see from Amazon that they're only expecting the next book in August 2007.  This should give me time to get my own copy of this book in preparation.
handslive: (Default)

Guess where
Originally uploaded by HandsLive.
The director for my area at work came by my desk on, I think, Tuesday and asked if I wanted hockey tickets. PJT said yes when I asked her (naturally). So, um, row 9. Center ice. 3-1 for Edmonton. I'm pretty sure she was pleased. :-D
handslive: (writing)
A novel of, hmm, let's see...Faerie, the mortal realm, Hell (which only appears in cameo roles), and "dragon princes" (née Arthur).  In spite of this, it's a very readable book, but I don't see how a satisfactory ending could have been expected.  Needless to say I didn't get one.  I don't blame the reference to Arthur, although that would be tempting, since he appears rather less than Hell does and without Hell's ties to the plot.  Still, I enjoyed about 90% of it.
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