January 2012
1 post
2 tags
November 2011
3 posts
2 tags
I Know Where You are and What You are Sharing:... →
Abstract: In this paper, we show how to exploit real-time communication applications to determine the IP address of a targeted user. We focus our study on Skype, although other real-time communication applications may have similar privacy issues. We first design a scheme that calls an identified-targeted user inconspicuously to find his IP address, which can be done even if he is behind a NAT....
October 2011
2 posts
1 tag
What's The Difference Between FM And AM Radio?
fakescience:
September 2011
2 posts
4 tags
http://nilretain.org/~justin/bandwidth_tests.html →
Here’s a link to the test data I mentioned in my previous post. It took me a little longer than expected to set up the Qwest/CenturyLink side of things. (Through no fault of theirs, though.. I just was lazy and didn’t want to move the bookshelf to get to the phone jack.) Data is just starting to come in now, but so far neither side looks that great. Only time will tell.
4 tags
Bandwidth woes
Today at 17:00, I will be the proud owner of not one, but two internet connections. I’ve been a Broadstripe customer for the last few years, and the service has been absolutely terrible. Sadly, because cable companies refuse to compete with each other, Broadstripe was my only option for DOCSIS broadband. When we moved in to our house, we had Qwest DSL (now CenturyLink), but it was also...
August 2011
1 post
1 tag
1 tag
July 2011
7 posts
1 tag
1 tag
2 tags
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
June 2011
6 posts
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
Breaking up is hard to do
EVE Online has long been my favorite game. I buy new games, play them for a while, and then go back to EVE. The gameplay speaks to me on a very deep level. I’m not in a large alliance fighting to control large areas of space, with billions and billions of ISK to my name (though, I’m sure the people that are feel the same way about how they play). I’ve just got my own little...
May 2011
2 posts
2 tags
MSVC and Templates
template <typename A>
class Foo
{
public:
Foo()
{
Bar<A> b;
b.method();
}
};
template <typename A>
class Bar
{
public:
void method() {}
};
int main( int argc, char** argv )
{
Foo<char> f;
return 0;
}
Take a look at this snippet of code. Does it look valid to you? On first glance, it might. But if you run it through your...
1 tag
April 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Again, the cloud: Dropbox
Since I mentioned how much l like Dropbox in my last post, I thought I’d add a follow-up. There’s been a bit of a buzz* lately about how insecure Dropbox is. I don’t see this as a reason not to use it, but extra precautions should be taken if you want to store sensitive information. I personally love TrueCrypt for this, as creating a fixed-size encrypted drive doesn’t...
2 tags
First thoughts on Amazon Cloud Drive
So, I’ve been playing with Amazon’s new Cloud Drive/Player for a few days now. Tl;dr version? I’m not impressed - Amazon certainly has the resources to have done a much better job.
Cloud Drive: I’m a fan of cloud storage. I love Dropbox, which is commonly named as the app to beat if you’re building a cloud storage solution. Amazon has to have some sort of local...
March 2011
1 post
February 2011
7 posts
2 tags
What I've been working on
… is a secret gift for Janice, so a lot of what I’ve been working on lately, I haven’t posted. I can say (since she saw the packing slip) that it involves this box of 64 ShiftBrites from MaceTech. Man, I wanted to go all Scrooge McDuck, and just dive into this box. These little things are pretty sweet, they’ve saved me the work of wiring up a ton of RGB LEDs and shift...
3 tags
Fixing Git "out of memory" errors on Windows →
Googling around, I found a lot of people had the same problem with Git on Windows that I did: large files (where “large” means above 350MB or so) cause “out of memory” errors.
A quick look into the file causing the error, Git.pm (ugh, perl), shows the reason right away: they’re doing nice, small 1KB reads of the file blob in a loop… but collecting the whole...
1 tag
SSL: Google vs. F5
Adam Langley, an engineer on Google’s Chrome team, wrote a blog post last summer titled Overclocking SSL. Adam argues that on today’s hardware, SSL connections are not computationally expensive, and showed us some statistics from GMail’s switch to HTTPS by default. He doesn’t go so far as to outright encourage other sites to do the same for their users, but the message is...
1 tag
1 tag
Now Playing: Interstellar Marines "preview slices"
The group at Zero Point Software have a pretty cool idea for funding Interstellar Marines. Take the pay-for-beta idea usually applied to smaller indie games, and use it to fund a high-quality “AAA” game. Release a few “preview slices” of different parts of gameplay along the way as Unity browser-playable games to keep interest up, and offer several levels of donation. I...
2 tags
A look at modern DVCSs
I’ve been a user of the Bazaar distributed VCS from Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu Linux) for a while now, at least for my personal projects. When I first chose it, I had already spent some time playing with Darcs for a few small projects. Darcs got its start in 2001 with roots in the GNU Arch project. (Bazaar’s predecessor - also named Bazaar - also has its roots in Arch.) A...
2 tags
The point where everyone notices IPv6
On Monday, IANA fulfilled its last request for /8 blocks of IPv4 addresses. This triggers the IANA “Global Policy for the Allocation of the Remaining IPv4 Address Space” exhaustion phase. This doesn’t mean there are no more available IPv4 addresses - APNIC just got two /8s on top of whatever they already have, and expect to be rationing them out for at least another 5 years. ARIN...
December 2009
1 post
2 tags
Manifest Gotchas
For those of you using Visual Studio 2008, and using it’s C++ TR1 support in SP1, here’s something I wish I hadn’t spent so much time tracking down..
TR1 features only exist in 2008 SP1, but the linker will happily build a manifest to link against the pre-SP1 CRT even if you’re using TR1. Some systems (including your development machines) will have proper side-by-side library redirection from the...
February 2009
1 post
Multi-button input devices
Keyboards are important to me.
I used to love pretty, low-profile scissor-key style keyboards. After trying a ergonomic keyboard a few years ago and having it relieve my occasional wrist pain, I never went back. Typing on a non-split keyboard even feels strange now. For about two years I’ve been using the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 Keyboard both at home and at work. There are a...
April 2007
1 post
1 tag
"Scripting Languages" vs. "High-level languages"
Recently, Joe wrote in his blog:
As I see it there are three kinds of languages in this world:
Hard to write, but blazingly fast: C and C++, or even assembly if you’re really hard-core
Easy to write, but so slow that you have to use them sparingly: PHP, Lua, Python, Perl
Flash
Java fits into an awkward niche between 1 and 2. It’s easier to develop in than C++, but not enough to keep up with the...
