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AUUG 2007

Today was the final day of the AUUG 2007 conference [1].

Yesterday I gave a talk about SE Linux for about an hour (not sure exactly as I forgot to make an MP3). AUUG is well known for having conferences with very technical delegates and I wasn’t expecting an easy audience. At the start of […]

Cheap Laptops for Children

I was recently browsing an electronics store and noticed some laptops designed for children advertised at $50AU. These machines were vastly different from what most of us think of when the term laptop is used, they had tiny screens, flimsy keyboards, no IO devices, and a small set of proprietary programs. It was more of […]

Getting People into IT

Pia writes about the difficulty in getting young women and young people in general into the computer industry [1].

While I agree that having more women in the computer industry would be a good thing, I have difficulty believing some of the claims that Pia makes. For example the claim that “[girls] are more career […]

Dreamhost and the DMCA

Dreamhost have refused my request (under the DMCA) to be correctly identified as the author of content copied from my blog. I am publishing this so that anyone else who deals with them will know what to expect. Also if someone wishes to sue Dreamhost in regard to content that they host this may help […]

Who Can Contribute to Free Software

A common misconception is that only programmers can contribute to free software. The first significant reference I recall to this was in a presentation by Pia Waugh [1] where she mentioned that she felt that the way words such as “coder” and “hacker” are used in the community as synonyms for “contributor” are denigrating to […]

Execmem and SE Linux

Eddy writes about problems getting the game oolite to run under SE Linux [1].

Strangely after I fixed the shared object issue with libffcall1 (as described in my previous post [2]) it appeared to work for me.

Eddy asked how to allow one application to create write and executable memory regions without allowing such access […]

Lintian and Executable Stacks

Debian has a program called Lintian that is used to search for common bugs in Debian packages. When it encounters a package with a shared object that requests an executable stack (as described in my previous post about executable stacks and shared objects [1]) it gives a warning such as the following: W: liblzo1: shlib-with-executable-stack […]

How SE Linux Prevents Local Root Exploits

In a comment on my previous post about SE Linux and worms/trojans [1] a user enquired about which methods of gaining local root are prevented by SE Linux.

A local exploit is one that can not be run remotely. An attack via TCP or UDP is generally considered a remote exploit – even though in […]

A Long Laptop Lifetime

Paul Russell writes about his 3-yearly laptop replacement at IBM [1]. It probably makes some sense to replace laptops periodically for a large company, but if you are buying for personal use then it makes sense to try and get a longer life out of an expensive machine. I think that aiming for 6 years […]

I Am #40 in Don Marti’s List

Don Marti has written his own equivalent to Technorati based on links from blogs that he reads, and my blog comes in at #40 in the list (last place) [1].

Don does note the fact that such lists mean little and links to a post by Doc Searls [2] which makes the same point more […]