Little Go 0.9.0 released
Little Go 0.9.0 has just been released to the App Store. The source code for the new version is available directly from GitHub.
The main feature of the release is that there are three new profile settings that provide much improved control over the computer player's playing strength. The other major focus has been on QA stuff: You can now choose to send a crash report if the app crashes, and you can send a bug report with attached diagnostics information at any time. Last but not least there have also been a number of bugfixes; the most important improvement probably is that the game is now saved after each move instead of only when the app is suspended. A crash should now be merely annoying instead of causing catastrophic data loss.
A statement on democracy
"Voting is almost never a way to reach consensus. Rather, it acknowledges that consensus has not been reached and side-steps further constructive attempts to reach it."
-- Stefano Zacchiroli, Debian project leader (original post)
This statement is a beautiful summary of one of the big misconceptions about what democracy truly is! Click the "Read more" link if you want to see my personal comments. For once in this post I am not talking about technical stuff...
Little Go has moved to GitHub
Volumes mounted by TrueCrypt are visible/accessible to other users
On Mac OS X, when I mount a TrueCrypt volume from a file container while logged in as user A, I can then switch to another user B and view the mounted volume's content (e.g. in the Finder, or in a Terminal.app session). I believe this is a bug, as the content of the TrueCrypt volume should remain private. I don't know enough about the underlying issues to lay the blame on any one in particular (Mac OS X, TrueCrypt, FUSE?), but what I definitely can say is that I cannot trust my Mac to be left alone while a TrueCrypt volume is still mounted.
This is how my mounted volumes' mount points look like inside a Terminal.app session. As you can see, the TrueCrypt volume PRIVATE
is mounted with permissions that make it wide open for any user to snoop around inside.
nargothrond:~ --> ls -l /Volumes/ total 184 drwxr-xr-x 1 patrick staff 8192 12 Dez 2010 BOOTCAMP lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 29 Aug 21:17 Macintosh HD -> / drwxrwxrwx 1 patrick staff 16384 31 Dez 1979 PRIVATE [...]
I have reported this issue on the TrueCrypt website in September 2009. I never received a reply. Today I double-checked whether the problem is still there with the latest version of TrueCrypt (7.1a): Yes, it is! In case anyone wonders: I am using Mac OS X 10.6.8.
CardDAV integration in Roundcube on Debian
After much fiddling around, I finally worked out how to get the CardDAV plugin to work on my Debian box. The main problem was working out where to place the plugin's source code and configuration files, and where to create symlinks so that the Debian-packaged version of Roundcube finds the plugin and picks up its config file. Here is the full account of how to install and configure Roundcube and the CardDAV plugin on a Debian box that tracks the "testing" distribution.
This CD-R will self-destruct in 15 years
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
Back of unreadable CD-R, 1 | 336.14 KB |
Back of unreadable CD-R, 2 | 270.98 KB |
Front of unreadable CD-R | 393.86 KB |
Type of still readable CD-R | 40 KB |
During the last few months I repeatedly came across CDs in my music collection that were no longer readable. Today I made an effort to go through and check the entire collection. The result: Between 20 and 30 CDs have deteriorated so much that they have become unusable. The CDs in question are all Sunstar CD-R media that I have burned 12-15 years ago. Click the "Read more" link to see some images...
Star Trek: Grave Robbers from Outer Space
Last week I went to the theatre to see the new Ridley Scott flick Prometheus. On Friday I saw the archive.org version of Plan 9 from Outer Space. Yesterday I watched the 2011 movie Cowboys & Aliens on DVD.
What do these films have in common? It's simple: All of them are of utter trash value! However, when I look at how much I enjoyed watching each of these movies, the fifty+ years old Plan 9 beats the hell out of the other two! Three reasons why, after the break...