Refactoring Perl code

Michael Schwern has written a cool article on refactoring Perl code, via a step-by-step analysis of an existing function: A Refactoring Example.

About a year ago, a person asked the Fun With Perl mailing list about some code they had written to do database queries. It’s important to note that this person was posting from [...]

No National ID for me

Canada’s privacy commissioner (no, not the old one being investigated for multiple cases of fraud, the current one doing a good job) has declared that there’s no satisfactory case for instituting a national ID card program:

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Denis Coderre has failed to make a solid case for a national identity card, the [...]

SunnComm won’t sue student

A victory for common sense:

In an abrupt reversal, SunnComm Technologies said Friday that it will not sue a Princeton University graduate student who published a paper that describes how to bypass CD copy-protection technology simply by pressing the Shift key.
…
SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs acknowledged his threat to file a lawsuit was a mistake. “I felt [...]

Back from New Hampshire

Rumney was fantastic. Unfortunately my cell phone broke so if you need to get in touch with me, use email.

Dumb-shit company to sue smart student over stupid technology

If you’re sensitive to strong language, skip this post.
When I wrote my previous post about John Halderman’s report on how to circumvent the MediaMax CD copy protection scheme, I was kidding when I said I worried that the DMCA would come into play. Two days later:

Princeton Ph.D. student John “Alex” Halderman published a paper on [...]

Graphing the US national debt

I like simple, concise explorations of complicated concepts. Over at die.net Aaron Hopkins has done just that for the US national debt by graphing it:

Spurred by Dubya’s recent economic stimulus plan (dubbed “Reaganomics II” by some of the media), I started playing with historic financial data for the United States. So I dug [...]

is the ’shift’ key now illegal/

john a. halderman of princeton university has discovered that mediamax cd3 anti-pirating, copyright protection, copy-prevention technology can be circumvented simply by holding down the ’shift’ key when you insert the cd into your pc, as he notes in analysis of the mediamax cd3 copy-prevention system:

i find that the protections may have no effect on a [...]

David Akin has a blog

David Akin, reporter for CTV and The Globe and Mail, has started a blog.
David’s a knowledgable tech reporter and all-around nice guy. I first met him in Las Vegas at DefCon a couple years ago when he treated us to dinner at New York New York (on his National Post expense account no less) for [...]

One-line movie review: The Rundown

Hell yeah! That’s some good ol’ fashioned dumb-assed entertainment (who knew The Rock could actually act?!?)

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