I was going to do work, honest...

[silveradept]

First, potentially interesting data: One of the hosts of Security Now, Steve Gibson, suggests that the Windows Metafile vulnerability is a backdoor. If he's right, then there's plenty of heads that can roll.

And I got some of it done... although it wasn't a whole lot, really. It's okay, there's still at least a week or two before those papers are due, but I'm going to have to figure some stuff out soon enough. Shouldn't be too hard, though, I think. I just need to find my inspiration - that's always tough. I guess that it would help me more to think like a genius, rather than just worrying. Oh, yes, I also get to express my amusement at the Canadian political adverts - as I have spent much of today watching the CBC's hockey coverage. (TK - Wings and Avs either next week or week after on NBC. I might also note that it's a little weird saying what networks the hockey games are on these days...) These adverts are of about the same quality as American political adverts. More about personal attacks of the leaders than the actual politics. I think the NDP ad was the only one that criticized the Liberals rather than Paul Martin and Steven Harper. Also, it looks like the parties are the only entities authorized to air political adverts, so no PAC advertisements endorsing one candidate or another. Is this true, lordmork? (Insomuch as the captions all say "Authorized by the representative agent of the X party")

Another age-restriction game bill. This is only significant because it's quite possible that a Bush says something intelligent at the end of it.

A different staff writer had to have done this upcoming article, because the tone changes completely from advocate to aggravant. PSP firmware 2.60 cracked. I find this proves that people will always want things to do more than what they're programmed for, if they have the capability. Inventive ideas do come out of unorthodox use, and I recognize the reasons why device manufacturers say quite strongly that warranties get voided and that they're not responsible for undesigned uses. Still, why be angry or annoyed at people who choose to add extra functionality to their devices. They already paid the manufacturer... and they may have to do so again if they crash it unrecoverably.. If they use the device for illegal means on home created software, the manufacturer has a very good case of not being liable for any damages - they didn't use the company's software. (Otherwise, Microsoft would be responsible for every gods-damned virus and worm that was designed on a Windows machine. With the way some people are anti-Microsoft, virus writers would be claiming they were designed with Microsoft products, regardless of their real origins.)

Speaking of Microsoft, I'll link it again - one of the hosts of Security Now, Steve Gibson, suggests that the Windows Metafile vulnerability is a backdoor.

Beyond that, I got to look at stereograms today, on the monitor - and I was able to do it on the monitor, something I had trouble with before. Even able to hold things for an animated stereogram. In terms of finding order in chaos, or rather, the natural chaos of the universe, Stereograms can be great, as they make one pattern hide in another. But this, this sort of idea that Taoists have been saying for years is true - overloading one way, either in yin or yang, is unhealthy. Simply stick to the way that nature goes, find the Way and be in harmony with it, even when the Way is chaotic. Hail Eris, Aneris, and everything else, including J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.

For some other ideas on how chaos and freedom are necessary pieces of a fulfilling life (with an interesting thought about copyright is antithetical to free speech), check out the philosophy of FreeNet, an anonymous, distributed network of objects. The program itself is available at the Freenet main page on Sourceforge. Apparently, they haven't been shut down yet, possibly because of decisions that say that if you don't know and can't point to an exact point where infringements and such occur, you can't shut down a network. (Someone else who knows better, let me know.)

So that's the stuff out of my department tonight. Tomorrow, I have to remember to play some games tomorrow to get better data for a paper, and then to write said paper and do the reading for it. The rest of you get to enjoy tomorrow unfettered.

Comments

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Or should the word 'autostereograms' be used? Bah, so many terms.

[silveradept]

It would be interesting, but the eyes would tire considerably after using it for a while, as I found it somewhat difficult to follow the animation, and the trick to stereograms is not focusing on the pattern. Something that caught attention could very well break someone out of the stereogram picture... whicih would be no help for playing something like stereogram Quake, say.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Hmm. How do you view stereograms? I found that, focusing my eyes correctly, with the best stereograms I could easily pay attention to the pattern itself (as long as these eyes didn't drift too close to the edges of the picture). The patterns join with each other and become one, and once locked into the state all can be viewed clearly, and roughly indefinitely--though again, a lot depends on the quality of the picture. Flaws lead to one-or-the-other choices, which cannot be held without effort.

[silveradept]

I tend to defocus my eyes and then let them pick out the stereogram pattern. With stereograms in books, I can then hold taht image indefinitely so long as my eyes don't snap back to near-focus by anything distracting me or by trying to peer to intently at something. I think it's a little tougher for me on a monitor because of the refresh rate - I think my eyes or something subconsciously detects the refresh rate and wants to pay attention to that, rather than the picture. The animation was tough because it alternated between two stereograms and the pattern changed - that tried to grab my focus away from the stereogram image.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Hmm. Interesting--I usually pay attention to the pattern while bringing the equal parts on top of each other. When the focus is correct, the same parts are in the same position even if the parts themselves change, so one can hold the same focus regardless of what one is focusing on (again, if flaws don't interject).

Refresh rate... that might be an issue. Is there an easy way to find out one's monitor's refresh rate (and if so, what's yours)?

[silveradept]

On Windows systems, it's in the Display control panel applet. The tab marked "Monitor", then the advanced settings, I believe of that, will let you choose a refresh rate - the one currently selected is that.

For Linux systems, it may be much the same idea - control panel applets, display/monitor areas, and then finding the object that controls the refresh rate. Again, the currently selected option is what's currently there.

On my Windows system, refresh rate is about 100 Hz. I looked at the stereograms on my Linux setup, which runs at 85Hz. Trying to do that on 60Hz would probably be a problem, because I can detect a 60Hz refresh rate much more easily than 85 or 100Hz... 60Hz will give me eyestrain or a headache if I look at it too long.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Ahh. Oddly, this is a Windows system, but the one selected was 60 Hertz, possibly due to the monitor used (CRT, make unknown). Hrm.

[silveradept]

60Hz is considered the "safe" default than every monitor from here to eternity should be able to run, and beyond that, at 640x480 resolution. That's default "safe", usually. Often, when told what type of CRT the object is, Windows (and many other OS) then adjusts itself to provide other options. Sometimes, even unknown, Windows will provide aptions that may or may not be possible to use. Experimention is often encouraged in these cases up to something safe - trying to run too high a refresh rate will usually cause a screen blank (be patient for about 15 seconds and it will revert if such should happen.)

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) What counts as 'unsafe'--just the causing of a screen blank?

*uses a resolution of 1280 by 1024*

[silveradept]

Well, that's one sign, yes, but there are rumors of some models trying to burn themselves out and not doing just a screen blank if asked to do a regresh rate too high. I suspect that would come out of trying to get a refresh rate that's far, far, too high and having no safeguard built into the CRT to just blank the screen if it can't keep up.

But if you can run 1280x1024, you can probably bump your refresh rate up a bit. If, by some chance, you have documentation on your CRT, I think it shows the maximum refresh rates at various stardard resolutions.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Ahh. Thank you!

[silveradept]

No problem. I find it much gentler on the eyes to run the refresh rate as high as I can get it to go.