eightface

Stating the obvious

Today, we receive news of yet another major Internet Explorer vulnerability. It seems that IE and Microsoft IIS server are working in tandem to infect computers on the internet. Point of the article? You should stop using Explorer. Why I liked it? One of the reasons is this quote:

He said Microsoft was aware that operating systems had vulnerabilities, but added that it was an industry-wide problem.

Software? Bugs? No way.

The other reason would be the inset picture near the bottom of the page, read the caption (screencap). They probably did a lot of poking around in the stock-photo archives to find a gem like that.

Brainfuck

Brainfuck is a Turing-complete programming language that can be implemented with the smallest possible compiler. The language has eight statements that perform pointer operations.

Example: Hello World

++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]
>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.
>.+++.——.——–.>+.>.

The programs tend to be a little on the complicated side. The programs can be run on a turing machine, which can accomplish any computing task.

On this day in history

Last friday, I attended my convocation. For the four years of service to my univseristy, I was awarded a piece of paper. The coupon entitles me to a Bachelor of Computing with a Subject of Specialization in Computing. Nice and redundant.

The ceremony was alright, kind of long, but that wasn’t surprising. Maria Klawe was awarded an honorary doctorate in computer science, and gave an interesting address about women in computing, and computers in education. She is currently president of ACM and is Dean of Engineering at Princeton.

I looked kind of hobbitish with the cape and hood. Although it may have been the wildman hair and beard. One of the weirder parts of the ceremony was receiving the degree and having the chancellor say, “Congratulations Mr. Editor,” to me. He knew who I was. It mainly seems weird because he was the CEO of TD Bank. And there was Alex, my co-editor, who replaced his name on the cue-card with that of Roberto Alomar, former second-baseman for the Blue Jays.

My project supervisor, Robin Dawes, gave me a copy of Non Campus Mentis. It’s a collection of excerpts from university essays that produce an entirely different version of history.

The new look

I started tinkering with this layout before I left for Moosonee. It’s the first time I’ve used just CSS for the layout. There are probably a few hacks around and i bet it won’t be perfectly valid CSS and XHTML but it’s close. The point of the exercise? To start familiarizing myself with CSS. In theory, I can do a redesign just by editing the style sheet.

The transition isn’t quite complete but this gets me moving and forces me to complete a few of the pages in the near future. I will organize the box and add more to the writing section.

Now I can get back to some regular posting as well. A few things are probably fucked right now, mostly with the comments. The quicklink comments will be completely broken, and the quicklink archives will probably be messed up. The comments work for the main weblog posts, but previewing will probably screw up, so don’t bother.

Shaking hands with Saddam Hussein

American relations with Iraq weren’t so frosty twenty years ago. It looks like Rumsfeld and Hussein were friends back then; I bet Ol’ Rummy wouldn’t even invite Saddam to his birthday party now. Photograph is courtesy of the National Security Archive. It appears the Americans knew Iraq was using chemical weapons on the Iranian’s and Kurds but didn’t do anything about it (article):

While condemning Iraq’s chemical weapons use . . . The United States finds the present Iranian regime’s intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations and the moral and religious basis which it claims

Rumsfeld wasn’t working for the American government at the time, but rather pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Co. He was sent as a Presidential envoy and personal friend of Reagan. He had served posts in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

They also have a videoclip of the handshake available.

Dark Knight

I figured it’s about time to weigh in on the Canadian election that is currently gearing up. Here’s my favourite quote so far (article):

There’s still a long way to go, but Paul Martin is still Paul Martin and not Batman.

I haven’t read much about the election yet though; the week up north and away from the internet put me into a bit of a news void. I also need to figure out how to go about voting. I don’t have any postal mail yet and thus no real proof that I live here.