For those who’ve heard about the crazy news about the patent trolls that are invoicing people based on their claims to have invented image linking in 2000 (and patented it in 2002) there is a site that is gathering information about the patent itself (Republic of Singapore Patent No. 95940) and the Australian company behind it.
The site is at http://suevuestar.biz/ and includes the handy information that the Australian patent actually lapsed because they failed to pay the renewal fees!
For the past few weeks I’ve been reading “Codebreakers
But today, via Bruce Scheiers blog, I’ve learnt that the trust that now runs BP has is facing financial problems as they receive no external funding and need cash to help preserve the buildings and the exhibits they restored after taking over the site in the 1990s.
The Bletchley Park Trust receives no external funding. It has been deemed ineligible for funding by the National Lottery, and turned down by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation because the Microsoft founder will only fund internet-based technology projects.
For the site that hosted the organisation that arguably saved the day in World War 2, not to mention being the birthplace of the first real computer, Colossus (( yes, I know it wasn’t Turing complete! )), it’s a sad predicament. 🙁
Update: Debian has a good summary page on their wiki.
This is pretty serious – a packaging stuff-up for OpenSSL by Debian (and hence Ubuntu) has resulted in not-very-random randomness being used in various packages such as OpenSSH for key generation. The Ubuntu report says:
A weakness has been discovered in the random number generator used by OpenSSL on Debian and Ubuntu systems. As a result of this weakness, certain encryption keys are much more common than they should be, such that an attacker could guess the key through a brute-force attack given minimal knowledge of the system. This particularly affects the use of encryption keys in OpenSSH, OpenVPN and SSL certificates.
This is a Bad Thing(tm), Debian have told their own developers:
Since the nature of the crypto used in ssh cannot ensure confidentiality if either side uses weak random numbers we have also randomized all user passwords in LDAP.
It’s also been around for almost 2 years now according to the Debian security notice:
The first vulnerable version, 0.9.8c-1, was uploaded to the unstable distribution on 2006-09-17, and has since propagated to the testing and current stable (etch) distributions. The old stable distribution (sarge) is not affected.
So now would be a good time to change your passwords, unless you can be certain you’ve never logged into a Debian or Debian derived system..
As part of Adobe’s OpenScreen project to get Flash onto more devices they have just openly published the Flash 9 specification, with what appear to be no restrictions on their part (that I can see). The OpenScreen site seems to confirm it, listing their moves as:
This is great news, suddenly Flash becomes an open standard and the projects to create open source viewers for it suddenly should have a lot of the information that they need. It doesn’t remove all the issues though, some of the codecs that can be employed are patented and can themselves attract licensing fees, but it does appear that they are not required (unlike OOXML, which requires MP3 for audio content for example). It also means that people wanting to implement open tools to create Flash content, or export to Flash, will have their job made a lot easier too.
Hats off to Adobe – better late than never!
Update: This also includes the FLV/F4V specification too!
Found via the ever excellent LWN..
CSIRO has developed a biodegradable plastic that’s made from wheat starch. They say:
The wheat starch plastic has similar properties to conventional plastic, but it will break down in the compost heap in 40 to 50 days.
They also claim that it won’t contaminate the food it holds, but I wonder if it is suitable for coeliacs given that wheat starch is known to contain residual gluten ?
(Hat tip to Jeremy for that).
At the ripe old age of 86 Humph has left the building.. 🙁
The master of trumpets, wit and innuendo will no longer be hosting I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, leaving us ISIHAC addicts to ponder what will happen next ?
Perhaps the BBC will finally get around to publishing that final compendium of Mornington Crescent rules, which might finally bring together the warring standards bodies of the game in a mark of respect to its most notable (and knowledgeable) referee (( it is, of course, sheer irony that the Wikipedia page for Mornington Crescent has part of its entry labelled as requiring citation; don’t these people listen to the wireless ? )).
Humph could be surreal, rude, funny and incisive all in the same sentence. His wit, humour and timing was second to none and he will be very much missed.
Here’s to you Humph, don’t get caught in the Dollis Hill Loop..
Playsforsure was so bad that Microsoft didn’t even use it for its own Zune digital media device. Along with that, Microsoft shut down its failed online music store, and now for the kicker, it’s telling anyone who was suckered into buying that DRM’d content that it’s about to nuke the DRM approval servers that let you transfer the music to new machines. That means you need to authorize any songs you have on whatever machine you want — and that’s the only place they’ll be able to reside forever. And, of course, any upgrade to your operating system (say from XP to Vista) and you lose access to your music as well.
So now you find out that with DRM you don’t really own the music you bought, it can get taken away from you very easily, but you won’t get your money back I bet!
Wales have just won the Grand Slam, beating France at the Millennium Stadium here in Cardiff.
We were watching the end of the game after coming back from scattering my dads ashes. What a finish Wales put on – a fantastic end.
From the ABC news:
Federal Opposition leader Brendan Nelson has issued another very specific apology to a member of the Stolen Generations. In his speech in reply to the national apology this week, Dr Nelson referred to the story of a Victorian Aboriginal elder, Faye Lyman. But Ms Lyman says Dr Nelson did not ask her if he could use her story. When he incorporated it in what she describes as a “toxic speech”, she says he took her comments out of context, misrepresented the way she was taken from her family, and made her feel “stolen all over again”.
She goes on to say:
My Dad was not happy that I was taken […] They cheated us, they cheated me of my life with him. Now, I feel like I’m stolen all over again. My dignity, and I’m ashamed he’s done this to me, I’m so ashamed.
No wonder that hundreds of people turned their back on him as he spoke in response to the sorry motion in Parliament (see picture 7 in the ABC News slideshow).
I’ve not been able to get to blog for the last week, so I thought my first post would be in support of the Federal Governments apology (flash video) for their treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia (the text of the motion is here).
So whilst I am a (very) new Australian I recognise the fact that the people who came from the same island that gave me life were responsible for many of the wrongs visited upon indigenous people here, and for that I say sorry.
As a footnote, if you haven’t yet seen the complete footage of the “Welcome to Country” ceremony that preceded the opening of Parliament I suggest you do so soon, it appears it will expire from the ABC News website on the 11th March. 🙁