The LambCutlet Disorganisation

I was quite glad to have got some light relief despite the deluge of crap in my inbox the last few days caused by the MyDoom virus, but Netcraft have this fine piece of dog food:

Much of the commentary on the SCO distributed denial of service scenario, including our own, has been based on the premise that SCO badly wants to keep their web site running. This may not be the case: unlike Microsoft, which has a real business to run and a real need to keep its web site operational, SCO Executives may not strongly care about the availability of www.sco.com. After all, Michael Doyle’s half a billion dollar patent win against Microsoft scarcely hinged on the response times of the Eolas web site.

In fact, the author of the MyDoom virus has delegated control of directing the most enormous volume of http traffic that the Internet has yet seen to hostmaster@sco.com. On a whim, SCO can direct that Tsunami at an object of their choosing, simply by changing an A record in named.conf in time for the change to propagate by Sunday.

In this context, SCO Executives may have latitude to consider alternative defenses which do not involve having to parlay with low-down-no-good-Linux-loving-CDN-providers.

Solutions 4 and 5 are just pure Comedy Gold™:

Solution 4: Get to the Windows machines before they go off.

Consequences: SCO executives persuade Slashdot readers that Windows machines are their common enemy and that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Someone in the Linux community notices Colin Percival’s Depenguinator program, and considers that with some minor modifications, it can be distributed by the MyDoom virus, and as its payload, download and install Debian 3.0r2, KDE, Open Office and Evolution. Changes name of program to “De Penguinator”.

Entire set of infected Windows machines is reached and either comes up running Debian or crashes stone dead trying. No denial of service attack occurs. SCO sends licence fee demands to owners of all the previously infected windows machines. They happily pay up and SCO splits the proceeds with Slashdot readers.

Solution 5: SCO Execs point www.sco.com at the loopback address 127.0.0.1, end lawsuits, dismiss lawyers, and invest remaining corporate cash reserves in call options in Dell & Microsoft stock.

Consequences: No denial of service traffic whatsoever seen on the Internet. Millions of Windows users notice that their computer is running extremely slowly. Many buy new machines, which fixes the problem. Dell & Microsoft stock rises. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Will have to see what happens to SCO tomorrow… :P

64 bit x86 “Intel style” looks to cease being myth and become reality…

Intel President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Otellini on Wednesday said the world’s largest chipmaker would likely give its 32-bit microprocessors an upgrade to 64 bits once supporting software becomes available.

You can be fairly confident that when there is software from an application and operating system standpoint that we’ll be there, Otellini said, responding to a question about 64-bit technology, in an interview with a Wall Street analyst that was broadcast over the Web.

If Intel do go this route, they’ll have two 64 bit architectures though in quite different market sectors. Itanium in the “Big Iron” arena with Yamhill (Intel hoping) crushing AMD in the desktop, workstation and commodity server markets.

The cat will be out the bag in just over two weeks at the 2004 Spring IDF! :D

Almost an oxymoron, but this is a sixth state of matter. Four of which we encounter in everyday experience, them being: solid, liquid, gas and plasma. The fifth is Bose-Einstein Condensate which was first discovered in 1995.

BECs are formed from atoms which all exist in the same quamtum state and when in this state, the individual atoms behave like a single super-atom, analogous to photons in a beam of coherent light such as that produced by LASERs. However, all BECs are formed from bosons, particles such as photons and alpha particles which have zero or integer quantum spin. Fermions however, have fractional quantum spin and because of the Pauli Exclusion Principle, cannot occupy the same quantum state. Fermions include particles like the electron, electrons and neutrons.

What’s the big fuss then? Well… electrons form a fermionic condensate in superconductors by forming “Cooper Pairs”, where the half spin of each electron adds up to form an integer. Now this is the first time this has been done with an atomic gas, Potassium-40 to be more precise. As such condensates straddle the gap between superfluids and superconductors, studying them should give up better insight to these exotic states of matter.

Snippet of the NIST/University of Colorado press release:

Scientists at JILA, a joint laboratory of the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) report the first observation of a “fermionic condensate” formed from pairs of atoms in a gas, a long-sought, novel form of matter. Physicists hope that further research with such condensates eventually will help unlock the mysteries of high-temperature superconductivity, a phenomenon with the potential to improve energy efficiency dramatically across a broad range of applications.

The research is described in a paper to be published in the Jan. 24-30 online edition of Physical Review Letters by JILA authors Deborah S. Jin, a physicist at NIST and an adjoint associate professor at CU-Boulder, and Markus Greiner and Cindy Regal, a post-doctoral researcher and graduate student at CU-Boulder.

The strength of pairing in our fermionic condensate, adjusted for mass and density, Jin explains, would correspond to a room temperature superconductor. This makes me optimistic that the fundamental physics we learn through fermionic condensates will eventually help others design more practical superconducting materials.

A revolution may be coming our way… :D

Life for me is good right now… Lots of work on my current contract at RS Components which is doing a good job at keeping me busy. Have also got my plane ticket to visit a friend in Latvia for a whole week in just over a fortnights time. Woohoo! :D

Really looking forward to it as the company should be grand though it’s been over 13 years since I last been abroad or travelled by plane… Also not too sure about the “slightly” chillier weather in Riga in comparision to boring old Northampton.

Definately will need to get some more batteries and memory cards for my El-Cheapo™ digital camera so as to capture those holiday moments… badly, in typical time honoured clueless holiday maker fashion. :D

恭喜發財！ Wishing you a happy & prosperous Chinese New Year!

This year is the year of the 木猴 (Wood Monkey). For those not so well versed in Chinese Astrology, the twelve year cycle of the twelve animals is complimented by a cycle of the five Chinese elements: 金 (Metal), 木 (Wood), 土 (Earth), 水 (Water), 火 (Fire). In all, this compound cycle takes 60 years to complete.

The Chinese New Year which began in 2000 was the year of the 金龍 (Golden (Metal) Dragon). I was born in 1978 which was year of the 土馬 (Earth Horse). The next time it’s a year of the 木猴 (Wood Monkey) again won’t be till 2064, sixty years from now… I’d be a pretty old man if I’m about to see it at all!

Instead of the usual astrological prognosis of the year we’ve just ushered in, I’ll just finish it with the fact that if you are generous to life, life will be generous to you… Law of Karma as per Buddhist and Chinese Philosophy.

Anyhow, let’s make the most of it. :D

Occasionally you get the odd piece of offbeat news, but this one from CNN made me chuckle, especially when you get the army involved!

Russian troops have retrieved 10 tons of beer trapped under Siberian ice, the Itar-Tass news agency has reported.

The truck carrying the beer sank when trying to cross the frozen Irtysh river, near the Siberian city of Omsk, around 2,200 km (1,400 miles) from Moscow. The driver and his partner managed to escape, leaving the beer-laden truck.

The rescue team of six divers, 10 workers and a modified T-72 tank from the Emergencies Ministry managed to save the load after a week-long operation.

They pulled the truck to an ice hole, opened the doors, and managed to pull out the kegs and bottles of beer. But as they were ready to retrieve the truck, the rope tore, leaving the truck on the bottom of the river, deputy head of the Cherlak district administration Vasily Yatkovsky told Tass.

The Rosar brewery in Omsk, part of the Interbrew Belgian group, says it is ready to take the beer back. With temperatures around minus 27 degrees Celsius (minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit) in the area, the brewery told Tass the beer was still in good condition.

Tass quoted the brewery as saying it will sell the beer as a rarity, but with a discount.

Hope all those involved in the daring rescue mission got an icy cold beer for their troubles though… :D

Hehe, not really… but for those that are familiar with UNIX enviroment with it’s tools and what not and rather missed them when you used Windows systems, you can now download Windows Services for UNIX, currently at version 3.5 and for the first time doesn’t cost anything anymore. It’s yours for gratis though requires registration via Passport and is a pretty hefty download at 217.6 MiB.

Now whilst such functionality has been provided by applications such as Cygwin or U/WIN*, where the former is a Linux emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality and the latter being a more general UNIX layer. However, both have the issue with the fact they still run on top of and are written in Win32.

Since SFU is a genuine NT sub-system, it runs on top of the kernel and sits along side Win32, which allows it to be case sensitive and improves performance as there wouldn’t be a hit in the need to translate APIs.

The SDK supports more than 1,900 UNIX APIs and migration tools (conforming to the IEEE 1003.1-1990 standard), such as make, rcs, yacc, lex, cc, c89, nm, strip, gbd, as well as the gcc, g++, and g77 compilers. Then there is a whole host of other features listed on a dedicated page.

The license agreement taken the Read-Me:

Windows Services for UNIX includes certain components licensed to Microsoft from third parties (each, a “Component Product”). A Component Product can contain its own license agreement, copyright notice, or both (each, a “Component Agreement”). The Component Agreements are located on the Product media in the cpyright.txt, gpl.txt and lgpl.txt files in the Docs folder. The EULA for Windows Services for UNIX can be found on the Windows Services for UNIX CD in the Eula.txt file, which is located in the Docs folder. If inconsistencies exist between this EULA and any Component Agreement, the terms of the Component Agreement shall control solely with respect to that Component Product.

Additional tools are also available from Interop Systems if you don’t fancy compiling your own, and include such things as Apache 2.0.x, bash, CVS, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, wget and so forth.

So why the tabloidesque “Microsoft Linux” reference initially? Well, for those that know the history of NT, it used to ship with an OS/2 and Microsoft’s own POSIX sub-systems. Perhaps a future version of Windows, ooh lets suggest Longhorn will actually include the SFU sub-system and tools out of the box? :D

Hope 2004 will be an “annus mirabilis” for all! :D

Was getting into the party spirit down in London at The End for New Year’s Eve and am now rather partied out though have had a nap and shower since coming back on the train.