Defcon Kekekekekakl (blog)

Endelig momsfritak!

Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:25:12 +0200 (CEST)

From: Andreas-Johann Ulvestad

Subject: The Gathering slipper moms , lovendring er på veg

I dag, etter en ukes saksbehandling, erklærte Finansdepartementet at
datatreff har falt mellom to stoler i lovverket. Det er nå vedtatt å bruke
§70 i merverdiavgiftsloven for å gi et midlertidig fritak for moms på
billettene til The Gathering i 2006, 2007 og 2008 samt framtida. Det vil
også komme en lovendring for å sikre dette for alle datatreff i landet.

Vi har kontakt med jurister for å finne ut hva som skal skje med moms
krevd inn for 2008-billettene. I teorien tilhører dette hver enkelt
deltaker, men det vil koste svært mye å sørge for utbetaling av ~48kr per
deltaker.

Vi har hatt massiv støtte blant regjeringspartiene, både på nasjonalt og
lokalt nivå. Fylkesrådsleder i Hedmark, Siv Tørudbakken (Ap) har stått i
spissen for å samle inn penger fra fylke, kommune og store bedrifter i
Hedmark i tilfelle man måtte betale momskrav på 1 million kroner.

Vedtaket er som følger:
«[..]Departementet har inntatt det standpunkt at merverdiavgiftslovens §70
som utgangspunkt ikke skal benyttes for å tilgodese formål utover
merverdiavgiftslovens formål. Dette utelukker unntak av hensyn til blant
annet humanitære, kulturelle eller sosiale formål.[...]

TGs hovedformål er imidlertid [..] å samle ungdom fra inn- og utland for
at disse skal kunne komme sammen for å dyrke datakultur. At dataspill er å
anse som kultur har regjeringen uttrykkelig uttalt i Stortingsmeldign 14
(2007-2008) Dataspill. Finansdepartementet antar på denne bakgrunn at det
ikke har vært lovgivers intensjon at adgangsbilletter til arrangement av
denne typen skal være merverdiavgiftspliktige.

På bakgrunn av en helhetsvurdering [...] finner departementet grunnlag for
å gi KANDU ved The Gathering unntak med hjemmel i merverdiavgiftsloven §70
fra plikten å beregne merverdiavgift på adgangsbilletter»

Takk til:
 * Kristin Halvorsen, Heikki Holmås og andre i Finansdepartementet (SV)
 * Heidi Grande Røys og andre i Fornyings- og adm. departementet (SV)
 * Trond Giske og andre i Kulturdepartementet (Ap)
 * Siv Tørudbakken (Ap) og andre i Hedmark Fylkeskommune
 * Terje Halvorsen og andre i Hamar Kommune
 * Folk i KANDU, The Gathering, osv
 * Hyperion N4F
 * Landsrådet for Norges Barne- og Ungdomsorganisasjoner (LNU)

Spørsmål om saka eller vedtaket? Ikke nøl med å ta kontakt med meg på
e-post eller telefon xxxxxx:-)

--
Andreas-Johann Ulvestad
Nestleder i Kreativ Aktiv Norsk DataUngdom

Kritikk til den senere tids bensinpris-protest

Den senere tiden har det vært en kraftig økning i drivstoff-prisene i Norge. Denne økningen har en direkte, og naturlig knytning til en kraftig økning i råoljeprisene. Årsakene til denne økningen i råoljeprisene er mange, tett knyttet og politisk betonte. Mulige faktorer som kan nevnes er svak dollarkurs, lavt produksjonsvolum, høyt forbruk i krigsområder knyttet til mange krigsfronter, økt behov og forbruk i raskt ekspanderende økonomier, så som Asia, samt innvirkning etter naturkatastrofer som orkanen Katrina og jordskjelv i midtøsten og Asia.

Protestaksjonene, som ønsker å redusere bensinprisene fra dagens niva rundt 13 kroner (og en projeksjon mot 17 kroner i løpet av someren 2008), fokuserer mer eller mindre rent på at staten skal ta ansvar, ved å redusere bensinavgiftene. Dette gjøres uten å ta noen referanse i at drivstoffavgiftene har holdt seg på samme nivå de siste ti år! Her er en oversikt over bensinprisene fra 2003 til 2007:

Lenger tilbake enn dette fant jeg ikke innenfor rimelig tid kildedata på avgiftsbeløpet, men disse vil man finne ved å dykke dypere i statens arkiver enn det jeg gjorde. Generelt ser jeg av avis-skriveri og kommentarer i diskusjonsfora at avgiftsnivået har ligget rundt fire kroner for bensin, og rundt 3 kroner for diesel, siden årtusenskiftet.

Jeg mener det er en veldig snever tankegang å redusere avgiftsinntektene, og dermed det økonomiske grunnlaget for veiutbygning, veiutbedringer, sykehusstøtte, støtte til trafikkskadeoffere, kollektivtrafikk m.v., som er noen av de områder bensin- og veiavgiften benyttes til. Store deler av de tilskuddene som fjernes ved en reduksjon i veiavgiften må hentes fra andre poster i statsbudsjettet, som vil kunne føre til et svekket helse- og velferdstilbud, reduserte midler til utdanning, osv. En reduksjon i avgiftene på bensin vil også kunne føre til en destabilisering av statens økonomi og tilskuddene til Norges bank, og dermed en garantert renteøkning. Dette i en norsk økonomi som allerede er ustabil.

Det benyttes også et andre argument, eller måte å redusere bensinprisene. Det hevdes at bensinstasjonskjedene tar en stor fortjeneste per solgte liter, og dermed har mulighet til å styre prisen ved å redusere sine marginer. Dette argumentet glemmer totalt at bensinstasjonenes margin ikke har økt, men tvert imot blitt redusert, i takt med økningen i råoljeprisen. Kjeden har rett og slett svært lite å justere bensinprisene med!

Det som er drivende, og styrende, for bensinprisene, er råoljeprisene direkte. Denne er også til en viss grad styrende på den amerikanske dollarkursen, som i dag er med på å destabilisere den internasjonale økonomi! Skal man gjøre noe med bensinprisen, må man gjøre noe med råoljeprisen! Og et grep i råoljeprisen vil kunne være med på å stabilisere dollarkursen, og dermed den amerikanske rentesituasjon, noe som vil ha en økonomisk kjedeeffekt internasjonalt sett.

Her ligger i bunn og grunn ballen i OPECs hender. Og der har den også ligget siden sist de justerte produksjonskvoten i 2003. Oljeproduksjonen har kapasitet til å levere langt mer enn den produksjonskvoten OPEC har satt, og oljeprisen er som alle andre salgsvarer styrt i en “supply/demand” prosess. Ved å øke tilgangen, reduseres prisene.

Min konkluderende kommentar er: Prisene må ned! Men kravene må settes rett! Dit fokuset settes i dagens protestasjoner er total skivebom, og man må snu siktet på de som faktisk har en mulighet til å gjøre noe med problemet, fremfor å sette hele den norske økonomi i en faresituasjon!

Friggin email disclaimers!

This was found _ABOVE_ the signature in an email I recieved though a
mailing list...

LEGAL NOTICE
Unless expressly stated otherwise, information contained in this
message is confidential. If this message is not intended for you,
please inform postmaster@-domain-removed- and delete the message.
The --Company-Name-Removed is a company Limited by Guarantee and
a Registered Charity.
Registered in England No. xxxxxxx Registered Charity No. xxxxx
Registered office -Adress-removed-
_______________________________________________

Since WHEN did it start to be my responsibillity
to check that you send your email to the correct recipient?
And what ever makes you think that information transmitted using an easily
intercepted plain-text protocol can be considered confidential
unless you encrypt your message and sign sender/reciever?

I'm sorry to drop this bombshell on You, dear e-mail sender.

It's your problem, not mine, so stop putting me to blame!

pizza.pl

Link to the file

The result of HiGLUG's need for a
pizza-selection-tool for their meetings is presented. Members of
HiGLUG are challenged to present simpler, more elegant, and/or more
error-free versions of this tool, written in a language of choice.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use List::Util 'shuffle';
use POSIX;

print STDERR "HiGLUG Pappas Pizza pizzaorderscript,\n";
print STDERR "the Fishy Perl-implementation print version 0.1\n";
print STDERR "\n";
print STDERR "Copyright (c) 2008, Jon Langseth and HiGLUG\n";
print STDERR "See source for licence (BSD-3-clause)\n";

#
#  Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
#  modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
#  met:
#
#      * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
#        notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
#
#      * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
#        copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
#        disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided
#        with the distribution.
#
#      * Neither the name of Jon Langseth nor the names of
#        its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
#        derived from this software without specific prior written
#        permission.
#
#  THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
#  "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
#  LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
#  A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
#  OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
#  SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT
#  LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
#  DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY
#  THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
#  (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
#  OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
# 

# Get number of pizza eaters, with error-control
my $number = shift;
if ((not defined($number)) || ($number < 1))
{
	print STDERR "No number of pizza-eaters given! Bailing out\n";
	exit(1);
}
# Recalculate, assuming each pizza-eater chugs 0.4 pizzas.
$number = int( ($number * 0.4) + 0.5 );

print "\nNumber of pizzas to order: " . $number . "\n";
# Check for an additional argument on the command line.
# If it is there, we have a wednesday, with different prices..
my $wednesday = shift;

# Set maxprice to whatever amount is alloted through IMT ant IT-tjenesten.
my $maxprice = 1200;

# This variable sets the price of a cup of pizza dressing..
my $sauce = "20";

# The following three arrays represent the menu of Pappas Pizza, along with
# prices and HiGLUG's preferences on the menu.
my @pizzas = (
	"Pappas spesial",	#1
	"Texas",		#2
	"Blue Hawai",		#3
	"Floriad",		#4
	"Buffalo",		#5
	"Chicken",		#6
	"New York",		#7
	"Las Vegas",		#8
	"Vegetarianer",		#9
	"FILADELFIA",		#10
	"Hot Chicago",		#11
	"Hot Express",		#12
	"Kebab pizza spesial",	#13
	"Egenkomponert, Pepperoni, Biff, Bacon, Skinke, løk",		#14
	"Egenkomponert, Biff, Pepperoni, Bacon, Skinke, Tacokjøtt");	#14

# The block of wednesday and non-wednesday prices need to be updated
# on a regular basis
my @prices;
if ( $wednesday )
{
	# Yep, it's a wednesday, so the pizzas are cheap.
	@prices = (
	119, 			#1
	119, 			#2
	119, 			#3
	119, 			#4
	119, 			#5
	119, 			#6
	119, 			#7
	119, 			#8
	119, 			#9
	119, 			#10
	119, 			#11
	119, 			#12
	119, 			#13
	119, 			#14
	119); 			#15
} else
{
	# No, it's not, so they are expensive
	@prices = (
	159, 			#1
	149, 			#2
	149, 			#3
	149, 			#4
	149, 			#5
	149, 			#6
	149, 			#7
	149, 			#8
	149, 			#9
	149, 			#10
	149, 			#11
	149, 			#12
	169, 			#13
	159, 			#14
	159); 			#15

}

# The weight will not be updated, unless it is submitted as a patch.
# Accepted format is unified diff.
my @weight = (
	4, 			#1
	3, 			#2
	7, 			#3
	4, 			#4
	4, 			#5
	4, 			#6
	0, 			#7
	6, 			#8
	0, 			#9
	4, 			#10
	7, 			#11
	5, 			#12
	3, 			#13
	9, 			#14
	9); 			#15

my @available = ();
my $total = 0;
my %result;

# Put all pizzas into an array of available choices, with the number
# of occurences withing the array representing the weight (preference) the pizza has.
for (my $pos = 0; $pos<$#pizzas; $pos++)
{
	for(my $i = 1; $i <= $weight[$pos]; $i++)
	{ push (@available, $pos); }
}

# This little bit of magic code from List::Util randomizes the array
# of available pizzas, to make the order even more random!
@available = shuffle(@available);

# A random number is generated within the range of the array of available pizzas,
# and used for selection of pizza. This loop is run the equivalent number of times
# as the input to the script dictated (calculated number of pizzas)
for ( my $i = 0; $i < $number; $i++)
{
	my $prand = $available[int(rand($#available))];
	$total = $total + ( $prices[$prand] + $sauce );

	# The loop will keep on running, as long as maxprice is not crossed.
	if ( $total < $maxprice )
	{
		# The pizza description text is used as a HASH-key with a value representing
		# the number of times this pizza has been selected.
		my $text = "Pizza no " . $prand . " -> " . $pizzas[$prand] . " (kr " . $prices[$prand] . ")";
		%result->{$text} = %result->{$text} + 1;

	} else {
		# When the maxprice has been crossed, we need to step the price back to
		# what it was when the last pizza was selected.
		$total = $total - ( $prices[$prand] + $sauce );
		print STDERR "\n";
		print STDERR "Went over the limit trying to allocate one more pizza.\n";
		print STDERR "Pizza overflow, giving up with the following available:\n";
		last;
	}
}
print ("\n");
# Run through the HASH and present the result.
foreach my $key ( keys %result )
{
	print %result->{$key} . " times " . $key . "\n";
}
print "Total cost should be kr. " . $total . " or sumthing like that\n\n";
# Ring in the order for those pizzas manually.

Da er den offisiell!

Installing Debian/Etch on a SGI O2

I have in my collection two fully operational SGI O₂ machines.
One of them is dedicated to be an IRIX 6.5 machine in my collection, while
the second basically was a parts-machine. After a little short thought, I thought
it would be nice to use the second macine as a deveopment box for the IRC bots
that I am working on off-work. One motivation for this, is the fact that one of
the bots is a "chatterbot", i.e. an IRC bot that talks "unprovoked", using
MegaHAL (a command line Markov chatter-bot) as a "chatter-engine". This
gave me an association to the Artificial Intelligence entity Erwin, of
Userfriendly fame. Erwin has had many shapes through the Userfriendly series,
but his most prominent, and long-standing, is a trusty old SGI O₂

I decided that the box, fittingly named "erwin", would not run SGI IRIX,
as I do not see that as a very flexible platform to use for developement.
Too much third-party software needs to bee added, and maintained, on IRIX,
to give me the toolset I like to work with. So I decided to go for
Debian GNU/Linux as the operating system for this box. In addition to being
a nice Linux distribution to work on, and maintain, this would give me
experience in adding "non-standard" operating system to a SGI machine.

Naturally, I had to start with gathering information and documentation
on the task ahead. Luckily for me, a few of the people that have done
Debian installs on SGI MIPS machines before me, have written some good
walkthroughs. These are the main docs that I have followed:

• Main walkthrough:
  • http://js1.kicks-ass.org/~js1/debianO2.html
• Additional hints:
  • http://tiki.karssen.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=14
  • http://www.pvv.org/~pladsen/Indy/HOWTO.html

First off I needed to satisfy some prerequisites. CDROM installation on O₂'s is pretty much
a non-option, unless the CD is written in a SGI-bootable EFS format. So, we need to get the
system net-booted using DHCP and TFTP.

For TFTP server, I used tftpd-hpa as this was the most configurable tftp-server for Gutsy Gibbons
The following is my /etc/defaults/tftpd-hpa file:

	#Defaults for tftpd-hpa
	RUN_DAEMON="yes"
	OPTIONS="-l -R 20000:32000 -vv -s /srv/tftp/"

The -R 20000:32000 is to make sure in.tftpd does not use any ports in the range below
20000 or above 32768, as it seems the SGI O₂ ROM bootp client does not understand
what is going on, if the server chooses ports outside of that range.

After installing and configuring, I downloaded netboot-boot.img from
ftp://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/main/installer-mips/current/images/r5k-ip32/
and placed it using the same filename in /srv/tftp/

Next, I configured my DHCP server with the following block:

	host o2-debian {
		option tftp-server-name "10.0.3.12"; # IP of TFTP-server
		next-server 10.0.3.12;               # IP of TFTP-server
		filename "netboot-boot.img";         # Observe: Relative path
		hardware ethernet  08:00:69:0c:3d:24;
		fixed-address 10.0.3.32;
	}

Note that this was done on my exisiting DHCP server (an OpenBSD box). If you do not have
an ISC DHCPD or compatible, configurable, DHCP server, you will have to install
one on a system in your net, and make sure you do not cause DHCP conflicts in the process.

On the TFTP-server (Gutsy Gibbons, as mentioned), I made sure MTU autodiscovery was off
(as the ROM version of my O2 did not support MTU atuodiscovery:

	echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_no_pmtu_disc

I am performing this as a "headed install", i.e. with a monitor, keyboard and
mouse connected to the machine. A tip in that direction: the O₂ has a
standard DSUB HD15 monitor connector, but required a monitor that supports
Sync-on-green.
Most monitors do not support this mode. Luckily, I had access to a Dell 1703FPS
17" LCP monitor, as most Ezio FlexScan CRTs, some Eizo LCD's and most modern Dell LCD's
support SoG. I have even seen the 30" Dell's beeing used with SGI systems.

With DHCPd configured, TFTPD configured, serving netboot-boot.img and tested,
and MTU discovery configured on the TFTP server, and video output on the LCD
verified, I was ready to boot the SGI. Powering on, I clicked "Stop for
mantenance, and then entered the Command Monitor. There, the following was typed in:

	unsetenv netaddr
	bootp():

This loaded the installer system over the wire, and the standard debian-installer
program fired up. The debian-installer process is thoroughly documented elsewhere,
so I'll only note stuff that did not go according to my previously menitioned
install walkthroughs..

Disc partitioning seemed to be supported on my version of the boot-image,
got "Disc to partition", wich then dumped me to a fdisk shell. As you'll
see in the following paragraphs, taking this "short" route, turned out to be
blind alley..

Printing the existing partition table, I learned that my Unit size was
2.02 MB. The existing SGI IRIX volhdr was 2565 sectors, though that did not
tell me much about how much space was actually available on it. So I decided
to flush the existing label, and create a new one, per the instructions in
the article listed as "Main walkthrough".

My resulting partition table was:

	----- partitions -----
	Pt#                                   Device  Info     Start       End   Sectors  Id  System
	 1:  /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1  boot         2       944   3917222  83  Linux native
	 2:  /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part2  swap       945      1010    274164  82  Linux swap
	 9:  /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part3               0         1      8308   0  SGI volhdr
	11:  /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part4               0      1015   8881872   6  SGI volume

Next thing was weird. After verifying the partition setup carefully, the debian-installer
hit me with "No partitions were found in your system. You may need to partiton your hard drives
or load additional kernel modules."

I jumped to a secondary console, ran fdisk manually, mkfs.ext3'ed it, so clearly the partitions are there!
Went to the installer menu, forced it to rediscover disks, ran configure disks again, blam, same error.
Confused and amazed.

After some work and troubleshooting, I tried deleting everything with fdisk, including the label itself,
then writing to disk, and restarting fdisk, and enter x-pert mode. Voila, fdisk tells me it does not
know anything about SGI disk labels. Bummer. Try to start parted and run a print... parted tells me
I have found a _bug_ in parted!

So, off I went and downloaded the netboot-boot.img file for Debian Etch from
ftp://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-mips/20070308etch1/images/r5k-ip32

Still the same problem! Except that parted in etch was not broken... So I was able to restore a SGI
partition label on the disk. But the partition chooser was still giving me grieves..
So I hit IRC, and got a tip to do a

	dd if =/dev/zero of)/dev/sda count=20 bs=1024

This blanks out the start of the disk, so that all or any partition information stored on the disk
is rendered invalid. Next, I restarted fdisk, entered Xpert mode (x), created a new SGI label (g),
deleted partition #9, recreated it with a saner value (range 0-1), and added the other partitions.

After this, I was able to restep the installer, and create+mount partitions. Actually, I had to
run through the steps twice, as the installer failed to let me select mountpoints at the first run.

Nice little note that explains what you see when starting an install on a box that has previously
run IRIX is found at http://lsw.ee.fhm.edu/cgi-bin/info2html?(parted)SGI%2520%2F%2520MIPS%2520Firmware

After getting the partition selection etc to work correctly, the Debian install process continued
as normal. I selected to install "Desktop system" in addition to "standard" in tasksel.
Though I do not really plan to use this machine much as a X workstation,this choice makes the
job of getting X installed correctly on Debian a lot less of a thought process than doing
the install manually later on.. (spoiler: bad move..)

Boot loader install on MIPS installs arcboot, this installation warns to enter the following
commands into the Maintenance Command monitor on first boot after installation:

	setenv SystemPartition scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(8)
	setenv OSLoadPartition scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(0)
	setenv OSLoader arcboot
	setenv OSLoadFilename Linux

After completion of bootloader install and installation finalizing, the system rebooted,
and I followed the instructions given on arcboot configuration given above.
After entering the commants, I gave the command "boot", and like magic, arcboot
loaded the Linux kernel, and kicked off init.

The only warnings/errors during first boot was Avahi that failed, and really, I could
not care less, since I will not be using Avahi/autoconf/bonjour on the system.

X started, with GDM active, showing som really weird colors! Console switching
works as expected, with X on VT7. Of some odd reason X starts with a resolution of 1024x768, but outputs only 800x600..
The default colordepth was set to 24, a depth that my graphics adapter does not support.
First try was then to set default color depth to 15, which gave correct color representation
on the SGI fbdev, but the resolution was still way off... Another problem was the fact that I
ran out of disk space!! X performance was also way off par with IRIX, so I guess this
system will not be used for X at all..

So, tip-toe off, starting tasksel.. I have to get around that somehow.. Unselected
both "Desktop environment" and "Print server", and selected OK.

Got a bit worried when I got an error message in the likes of:

	Use of uninitalized string on concentation in ...tasksel at line 345 ..

This seems to be reported in at least debian bug #450777, so I'll leave it at that (the bug
was resolved _after_ the release of etch)... From the bug-report close-statements:

	[ Joey Hess ]
	* Fix a funky $_ problem that broke calling task prerms on remove.
	(See #450777.)

Anyways. Cleaned off Desktop, then fed dkpg --get-selections to a file, and manually built a
list of packages that I wanted removed. If I ever perform another Debian install on an O2
with similar small (less than 3GB) harddrive, I will make sure not to install X11 and/or
the desktop system.

Finalizing the install, I pulled in my usual round of suspects for IRC-bot-development,
including opensshd, screen, subversion, and a host of perl, gcc and -dev packages..
And, in tradition with all the other machines I have in my network(s) at home, that
are available via SSH, I added a nice, themed issue/issue.net/sshd-banner file:

                  __
                _/  \_____
               /    /     '\
            __|    /|______/\
            >_/\_/|          )
               |  |     o    )
               |  |          |     erwin.home.defcon.no
               |  |   (      |
               |  |   {      |     SGI O2 running Debian/GNU Linux 4.0
               |  |   (      /|
              / ^-|_______.-¨  \
              \   | O2   ===   |
               ^-/__________.-*

Copy-paste from slashdot.. Y2K38 Watch Starts Saturday

Posted on /. by kdawson on Tuesday January 15, @03:42PM

Jon Masters writes

"I just wanted to remind everyone that Saturday, January 19th 2008 will mark the beginning of the 30-year countdown to the Y2K38 bug, when Unix time will overflow 32 bits. Some 30-year loan calculation software might start having problems with this over the weekend."

Re: Ny bilde-meme på Planet Snuskete

Pulten min på jobb:

Running Windows? Using MSN Messenger, AIM or Skype? KILL THAT WORM!

Please, all you Instant Messaging Windows users, clean out
your systems for IM-Worms! Currently the intarweb is experiencing
a real flood of IM-Worms. Here is a brief list of some of them:

• http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/virus_w32_virut.shtml

• http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/email-worm_w32_zhelatin_kc.shtml

• http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/flooder.shtml

• http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/imtrojan.shtml

• http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/kelvir.shtml

• http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/bropia_g.shtml

• http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/sumom_a.shtml

• http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/ircbot_kj.shtml

The rule, as always: Update your anti-virus application, run
a complete system scan, update your anty-spy-and-malware application
and run a scan with that one as well, and keep a close eye out for any
suspicious activity on your system...

And.... do not click on those links that your friend suddenly sent you!

Have a happy and prosperous new year!