Our new cluster has started arriving at VPAC, and this is what my office looks like after a big delivery yesterday.. 🙂
Fortunately that’s only for a few days until Xenon Systems start racking the boxes!
Category Archives: Computers
Samsung SCX-4200 printer driver security risk
Just to show what not to do when writing drivers, this just in from LWN:
A LinuxFR reader has sent out an alert (in French) about the Samsung SCX-4200 printer driver for Linux. It appears that the driver author had some trouble with the Linux permission model; the response was to make a few applications run setuid root. A quick look at the install script shows that the affected programs are xsane, xscanimage, and the major OpenOffice.org components. The script also replaces some CUPS executables and does some other fun things. This seems like code to avoid for anybody wanting to run a remotely secure system.
Ugh.
A namesake at LCA 2007 ?
Dear Lazyweb,
I was commenting on a blog by Alec about social media and conferences and looking at the LCA 2007 programme for the first time (as I couldn’t go this year) and spotted this on the research track..
Panel Session by Chris Samuel & Gernot Heiser
Now given that this Chris Samuel couldn’t go to LCA does anyone know who that was ?
Learning Styles
Just tried the VARK (Visual, Auditory, Read/Write, Kinesthetic) learning style test online and came out as a multimodal learner strongest in read/write & auditory learning. For the record I scored:
Visual: 2
Aural: 8
Read/Write: 10
Kinesthetic: 5
Makes good sense to me based on how I seem to learn.
The Perl Song
“Perl, in a Nutshell” sung by Pudge, thanks for the pointer Alec!
Free computer recycling from Apple
Apple are doing free computer recycling in areas of Sydney and Melbourne towards the end of July.
For a limited time, Apple will recycle any brand of personal computer, printer or computer related peripheral for free,* in an environmentally responsible manner. Apple continues its dedication to being an environmentally conscientious company, and we hope you will join us.
* A maximum of 20 systems per car load.
- Sydney Locations
- Saturday 21 July 10am – 4pm
- Sunday 22 July 10am – 2pm
- Melbourne Locations
- Saturday 28 July 10am – 4pm
- Sunday 29 July 10am – 2pm
There is more information about precisely where and when on the Apple Recycling Program web page.
Charlie Stross
It gets a bit weird when in the space of a month you’ve been loaned a rather good Sci-Fi book he’s written by a friend in Melbourne, find he has an article on the BBC News website and finally give up and Google him and find has a page on Wikipedia.
Especially when the last time you’d heard of him you were crashing on his and Feorag’s futon in their lounge in Edinburgh and all you knew was he wrote funny articles on alt.peeves and alt.lang.intercal!
If you do like the idea of dark Lovecraftian geek humour being applied to a the murky world of esoteric spying written by someone who knows about tech (not just pretending they do) then check out Atrocity Archives
Wikipedian Protester
Wonderful! (Via)
Bruce Schneier to Keynote at Linux.Conf.Au 2008
Banksy on the British Council Australia website ? (Updated)
For some obscure reason I’d ended up on the British Council Australia website and was surprised to see what appears to be a photo of a piece of Banksy graffiti there, seemingly acting as the logo for the Landerer Scholarship.
Here’s the photo on the British Council Australia site:
Here’s a stenciled Banksy “parachuting rat” in a photo on the Art of the State site.
Hmm..
Update: This might explain it…