linkblog.terdmonk.com

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Nothing goes better with some Python hacking than a little pizza. Nick Jensen couldn't wait for his pizza to arrive to begin hacking, so he spent the 30 minute wait-time writing a Python script to track the pie's progress:

I discovered an interesting XML feed the other day when I ordered a pizza from dominos. After seeing a dumb commercial about what some idiots do in their 30 minute pizza-waiting time, I remembered hearing something about being able to "track" your pizza online. So what did I do during my 30 minutes you ask? I went on over to dominos website to check out this amazing tracking device. It turns out to be just a flash app hooked up to an XML feed and Tamper Data revealed it was coming from here.

The details and the Dominos python script are below. Suffice it to say that you can pull an XML status on your Dominos order by hitting http://trkweb.dominos.com/orderstorage/GetTrackerData?Phone=phonenumber (where phonenumber is your 10 digits). You can easily parse this from other languages if you're not the Python type.

You've got 30 minutes... to write a python script

dominos.py

Gen Y is taking over. The generation of young adults that's compromised of the children of Boomers, Generation Jones, and even some Gen X'ers, is the biggest generation since the Baby Boomers and three times the size of Gen X.

Now that you’ve taken the quiz to determine if you are a visual, auditor

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The OLPC is embracing Windows: It will cost $200 (for now) and ship as a dual-boot machine running XP and a machine-specific version of Linux.

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One Laptop Per Child will ship a special version of Wind

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Exclusive: Google has murdered the AdSense account run by one of the web's most influential anti-Scientology sites. Yet another example comes to light that makes it look like Google is courting a new title of being the leading benefactor of the deep pockets of corruption the church of Scientology is so widely known for.

Funniest forum post i have ever seen LMAO have a look for yourself. There is no end some people's stupidity :P

• How to Pack Everything You Own in One Bag
  The Art and Science of Traveling Light
  

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It was announced yesterday that sometime back in September 2006 a line of code was removed from the Debian distributed OpenSSL package. That one line of code was responsible for causing an uninitialized data warning in Valgrind. It also seeded the random number generator used by OpenSSL. Without it, the error went away, but the keyspace used by affected systems went from 2^1024 to about 2^15. Oh noes!

A large majority of Debian and Ubuntu systems are affected. To correct the problem, you'll need to not only update OpenSSL, but also revoke and replace any cryptographic keys and certificates that were generated on the affected systems. From the Debian security advisory:

Affected keys include SSH keys, OpenVPN keys, DNSSEC keys, and key material for use in X.509 certificates and session keys used in SSL/TLS connections. Keys generated with GnuPG or GNUTLS are not affected, though.

For most people, this boils down to your ssh server's host key and any public key pairs used for remote ssh authentication. Any keys or certificates generated on the affected machines for SSL/https use also need to be revoked and regenerated. It's pretty ugly, really.

As far as teachable moments go, there's probably a lot to think about here. Software developers have this weird natural tendency to want to fix and reengineer things that aren't even broken. I'd go so far as to say that the desire to reengineer is inversely proportional to a programmer's familiarity and understanding of the code. I think it comes from our intense desire to make sense of things. It's the guru who's able to channel that hacker urge into solving new problems instead of creating new bugs out of old solutions.

DSA-1571-1 openssl -- predictable random number generator

OpenSSL PRNG Debian Toys (more discussion of the problem here)

With the amount of information available for your consumption everyday, it is unlikely that you are processing each piece of information as much as you should.

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I
outsourced this week's blog entry. I've been a bad blogger lately, because I'm
finishing the manuscript of a book about NetApp -- a sort of biography of the

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Let's say, just as a hypothetical, you're sitting at your computer, casually chatting up a fellow programmer. You begin to describe some bit of code, then bring it up on your display to illustrate. You want to highlight some particular part of the code. Perhaps you move the cursor invitingly over the area to bring it to their attention, or gesture towards it with your hand.

What happens next?

When I said there were two types of programmers, here's what I really meant:

1. Programmers who touch displays with their greasy, disgusting, bacteria-addled fingers.
2. Programmers who don't.

I am incredibly anal about people not touching my displays. I'm not even going to apologize. If you touch my display, I'll kill you. Displays are for viewing, not touching. Put down your damn sticky bun and go touch your own filthy display. Here's my mental image of everyone who has ever touched my screen:

You know that's you. You know it. You do. And you just can't resist touching my display, can you?

Every time it happens, I replay it in slow motion, desperately trying to insert some part of my body between the toucher and my monitor. But I rarely succeed.

Not everyone considers displays inviolate and untouchable as I do. They should. But keyboards are another matter. They're designed to be touched. And boy, are they ever disgusting. They're literally dirtier than a toilet.

Out of 33 keyboards swabbed, four were regarded as a potential health hazard and one harboured five times more germs than one of the office's toilet seats.

Microbiologist Dr Peter Wilson said a keyboard was often "a reflection of what is in your nose and in your gut".

During the Which? tests in January this year, a microbiologist deemed one of the office's keyboards to be so dirty he ordered it to be removed, quarantined and cleaned.

It had 150 times the recommended limit for bacteria - five times as filthy as a lavatory seat tested at the same time, the research found.

After reading that, I'm not sure I want to touch my own keyboard any more, much less someone else's.

So then, how do we clean our screens and keyboards that are so casually defiled by our coworkers, family, and friends? This is apparently not a big concern for some. I am continually amazed by the horrifying state of many programmer's computer workstation keyboards and monitors. I'm not talking about dust, but utter and total neglect resulting in devices I'm afraid to touch. Given the data, maybe that's a good thing.

Cleaning screens is fairly straightforward.

Most manufacturers recommend basic soap and water -- no harsh detergents -- along with a soft cloth. I've used the Monster ScreenClean kit for a while with good results.

You don't have to buy a kit, of course, but I definitely recommend some kind of microfiber cloth like the one bundled here. Microfiber is a generic name for any synthetic fiber that's finer than silk, and the stuff is amazing. It works well on all kinds of displays: televisions, computer monitors, laptops -- I even use the kit to clean my glasses.

Cleaning keyboards is a much more challenging task.

Despite what you may have been told, compressed air dusters aren't just for sneaking up behind your unsuspecting coworkers and friends and spraying them in the neck and ears. I mean, yes, that's the ideal use, but it's also quite good at cleaning up computer equipment. Including keyboards. You can remove most of the dust and a substantial amount of the unmentionable gunk that builds up under the keys with a generous application of compressed air.

Compressed air is a reasonable first line of defense. But it does nothing to actually clean the keyboard. Sure, you could methodically disassemble your keyboard, or if you're hard core enough, even disassemble your laptop's keyboard, and painstakingly clean every part of it. But is all that work really worth it to clean a lousy keyboard? Short of buying a new keyboard every few years, is there a better way?

Maybe. Have you considered putting your keyboard in the dishwasher? It's not as crazy as it sounds; based on the volume of reader feedback to an old BoingBoing post on the topic, I'd say it works. It certainly seemed to work for Austin Matzko.

But lately the years of dirt build-up [on his 10 year old keyboard] have been really disgusting, so I decided to try something I read about a long time ago: cleaning the keyboard in the dishwasher.

Everything washed up beautifully and dried out by the next morning; check out the before and after pics. Total time disassembling and reassembling the keyboard was probably five minutes, which is a lot less than you'd spend trying to clean the thing with Q-tips. If that's too much work for you, just stick the whole thing in there, but give it several days to dry out.

Note that Austin removed the circuitry from the keyboard first, while some people stick the whole keyboard in the dishwasher as-is. There is a followup NPR article that toes the keyboard manufacturer party line and advises against doing this, so obviously, try at your own risk. Personally, I can't wait to give it a shot. I'll buy a new keyboard first, just in case something goes horribly wrong -- and because I need a second keyboard to use while the first one dries for a week.

If that's too radical an approach, you can fall back on using the old reliable soap-and-water damp rag to scrub your keyboard clean. There's even a neat Mac utility program, Keyboard Cleaner, which will lock out your keyboard while you're thoroughly wiping it down.

I'm no germophobe, but I like using clean keyboards and displays, and I'd prefer to see other people using clean equipment too. But remember -- just because I can clean my display doesn't mean you should be touching it, Poky McSmudgypants.

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Thanks to drjon for:

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To socialize these days, hundreds of millions of people every month turn to social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook.

Thanks to Jeff for:

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Thanks to Mike for:

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Thanks to Gregor for:

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