April 2008 Archives

Since my Metasploit 3.0 under Ubuntu 7.04 post has been popular, I figured I'd update this for 3.1 under Ubuntu 8.04.

Basically it's the same, only less.

sudo apt-get install ruby libreadline-ruby libopenssl-ruby

sudo apt-get install rubygems

sudo apt-get install libglade2-ruby libgtk2-ruby

Now that I've a link from David Staples's front page, maybe the pressure is on a little bit.

So I'm going to cheat a bit for my first story since: a third-hand report (via Katebits via Kukla's Korner) about the Hockey Night in Canada towels.

I never had any great desire to possess one - although I have dreamed about Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final with Yours Truly starring, so I don't lose *all* my Canadian-boy cred - but I have always wondered where those towels came from and where they went after the interview. I'd thought that perhaps they got re-used, but they were always so white.

Now I know. I still don't desperately want one, but that's pretty cool. And if you haven't seen one of these yet, you've obviously never watched HNIC - why not?

Snoop does.

With all due respect to David Staples, there's a difference between the Oilers offers to Vanek and Penner, and the offers made by other teams for Fedorov, Ohlund, Gratton, and Sakic. Furthermore, it's a bit of a misdirection (somebody less charitably inclined might say error of attribution) to say, as Staples did:

"Look at that list -- the only player who got an offer sheet who didn't pan out was Gratton, though even he has had a long NHL career."

Or maybe Staples just misspoke. The fact those guys got sheets had nothing to do with their success (and while the sentence implies that, I don't think that's what he meant). But there's a good reason why those guys were successful after their offers - they were successful before them too, they were of undeniable quality.

Sergei Fedorov in 1998 was 29 years old and had played 506 NHL games, scoring 592 points, including two 100+ seasons. In his rookie year, he was better than a point a game, and 96-97 was the first year he didn't at least match that, although he had a few short seasons and there was the lockout in there as well.

Chris Gratton in 1997 was weeks or days shy of 22. He'd played four full NHL seasons by then - 292 games in total (strike-shortened season again). 3rd OA pick, C with great size, looked like he was starting to get it with a 62 point season under his belt.

Joe Sakic in 1997 was 28. He'd played 9 seasons, 655 NHL games for 820 points, including 4 100+ point seasons. His worst total was 62 - his rookie season and the strike-shortened season.

Mattias Ohlund is the exception. He, however, had been a highly-touted first round pick - 13th overall. Vanek was 5th OA and in his second season, Penner was a college grad and a free agent signing with one season (and a Stanley Cup). Vanek played a couple of years in college too.

The offer sheets by Lowe don't (necessarily) show great insight, but what they do show is that he loves the college boys. Horcoff, Pisani, Gilbert, Cogliano... Gagner almost went the NCAA route as well, if I recall correctly, and was persuaded to give the O a try by his father - a fact for which all us Oilers fans should be eternally grateful. I believe that Lowe is betting those couple of years spent in college mature the players more quickly than time in juniors - I wouldn't bet against him, either.

Previously, almost all offer sheets were made to players who were already very successful. Lowe's were to players that looked like they might be. I think making an historical comparison is a mistake though; there's not much in common between the players mentioned by the Copper Blue Dreams folks and the players Lowe grabbed for.

PunjabiOil was kind enough to demonstrate how lousy my picks were. Thanks, I think. Maybe I should have gone with the cat.

Like a Leafs fan, however, I am undeterred. Perhaps I can at least deny Burke that lottery pick (if I may mix my metaphors):

SERIES A Montreal vs. Philadelphia - Montreal in 6

SERIES B Pittsburgh vs. New York Rangers - Penguins in 7

SERIES C Detroit vs. Colorado - Detroit in 5

SERIES D San Jose vs. Dallas - Dallas in 6

Joel Esler's a SANS handler, today he wrote about Apple's Software Update.

Unlike Joel, I do have a Windows machinet. I have a Boot Camp partition on my iMac, and so obviously have the Apple Software Update tool installed (it's part of the drivers installation, so it's not like I had a lot of choice, but I didn't mind it at the time). My wife's PC is also Windows, since she shares it with her daughter, although my wife mostly uses her iBook. So, I can confirm that the download has moved from "update" to "new software":

Like most, I was very disturbed by the idea of Safari suddenly appearing as a security update. My wife wasn't sure if I or my stepdaughter might have installed Safari on her PC, but I don't even use it on my Mac, I prefer Firefox on all platforms.

Joel explicitly asks two questions, and I believe a third for rhetorical purposes which I'm going to answer anyway.

1) Is it enough that Apple moved the download to a new heading? Sure. I don't mind Apple saying, in effect, "Hey, you like some of our software, maybe you'll like this too." It's a bit pushy, but whatever.

2) Should it still be checked by default? Definitely not. It was annoying when I was applying QuickTime updates, and it still is. I don't like downloading stuff I'm not going to use, and I'm sure one of these days I'll download it by mistake because I'm in a hurry to get to work or whatever. So boo to Apple for that.

3) Will any reporting Apple does of an installation base as a result of counting downloads be "a real metric"? No. Never was. I've personally downloaded Firefox - various versions since 0.2 up to 3beta5 - probably several hundred times, and have personally installed it a thousand or more times. Obviously not all of those have been for personal use, but I can't guarantee that my mother in law uses the installation I gave her (although I think she splits time between it and IE). I use it everywhere, but I have several machines, all of which have been reinstalled at least once apiece. I still should only count as one user, not iMac OSX+Boot Camp, 2 G5s at work, Linux PC + 3 VMs, Powerbook, work+home Windows PCs = 11 installations. Same goes for Safari: I have it installed on all of my Mac machines (4), but use it on none of them.

However you cut it, while I think it's perfectly fine for Apple to make Safari downloads available through their update tool for Windows, it's not cool to have it install by default - there's absolutely no reason to do it. If I accidentally install it, I'm unlikely to use it (or even be aware that it's available), and if I install it on purpose, I would have done so anyway.

Yeah, we all knew that, and I'm hardly alone in saying his actions vs Brodeur the other night were, to revert to the vocabulary of one of my former vocations, fucking shameful.

The comments thread at BofA is divided, as I'm sure are most discussions of the topic. Most seem to think Avery's a jerk who should get a bit of his own back, but some are wondering why it should be a penalty.

Why it should be is simple.

Without looking at the text of the rule, there's already a penalty to deal with behaviour of this sort: unsportsmanlike behaviour. What Avery was doing was practically a textbook definition of the word "unsportsmanlike". I don't agree with Ron MacLean though. A 10 minute unsportsmanlike won't deter behaviour of this sort, especially if some players with lesser talent than Avery decide to mimic him. Does Minnesota care if Derek Boogard is off the ice for 10 minutes? Oh noes, he won't be available to... uh... hit somebody else really really hard! Hit the team with a penalty they'll have to kill. That will drive the coaches wild, even if it doesn't deter the players.

If we want to be all rules-lawyer-y though, Rule 41 section G could apply. "A misconduct penalty shall be imposed on any player who persists in any course of conduct (including threatening or abusive language or gestures or similar actions) designed to incite an opponent into incurring a penalty." There's Ron MacLean's argument. Avery was practically begging Brodeur to slash him a good one, or for any other Devil to crosscheck him in the kidneys. Section N also includes verbiage that says, in essence, "or anything else we don't like," although the examples are all for physical abuse, not childish behaviour.

So, yeah. Avery could have been assessed a penalty on the spot, no questions asked, and I don't think Campbell would have listened very sympathetically to any complaints from the Rangers. My question isn't "so why should that be a penalty," it's "why wasn't that one already?"

I'd like to see such behaviour warrant a 4 minute double minor, but I've been known to be a bit of a retributionist. A couple of PPG against will make Renney think twice before he sends Avery over the boards again.

Normally I don't like passing on links without (much) comment, but this one's too rich to pass up. DMFB from CinO does the arithmetic of a .22 to the nads vs a slapshot hockey puck to the same.

Pretty sure that my own maths are correct in my comment. If not, well, it's been 17 years since I took physics, although I'm still using the same calculator. Sharp EL-531A, best computating device I've ever owned, and all you Mathies with your graphing HPs can go piss up a rope -- mine cost $10 at Zellers.

I listened to the year-end interviews for the players: Garon, Gilbert, Cogliano, Gagner, Glencross, Hemsky, Horcoff, and Penner. Nobody said anything outrageous, mostly it was a lot of talking about how much they’re looking forward to next training camp and next season. Horcoff had the most to say, the only one to touch on how he thinks Lowe will handle the team. Even so, he was cagey, all he would say is that he thinks Lowe has a core group of guys and will have to be aggressive.

Glencross, the only remaining free agent from that lot, said he’d like to stay in Edmonton: “fun to come to the rink every day, always smiling, always having a good time. . .” From the comments he and others made, it sounds like the dressing room was pretty tight this year, which may account for the lack of collapse as they had last year. It makes you wonder how much wind the Smyth trade took out of their sails, especially since none of the return on that trade started playing immediately.

Some of them mentioned off-season training, Horcoff and Gilbert in particular. Horcoff thought that while his strength had improved this year from last, he was still knocked off the puck too much, and he’d like to fix that. Penner seemed to think that his training last year was ok - he’s been saying all season that most of it was the short off-season for him last year - and said of the questions about his fitness: “People were grasping at straws, looking for reasons to blame you for whatever your performance.”

While it would have been nice if Penner had been asked and had answered a more direct question about what exactly he thought his problem early on (and January-Februaryish) was, he did say of the upcoming training camp, “It’s going to be a lot different for me, just being able to be familiar with my surroundings and not … have the same questions repeated to me over and over again.” It sounds like maybe he was initially just uncomfortable, and I don’t care what anybody says, when you go from 450k a season to 4.5 million, the pressure has got to be on.

Hemsky made a curious statement when asked about team toughness: “We have some toughness, we have team toughness, everybody steps up for each other. It would be nice when we get some tough guy here, cos we have a lot of young guys here, but we’ll see what happens.” Does that mean he thinks Stortini’s doing an inadequate job protecting them? To my eye, the team didn’t get pushed around a whole lot this year, particularly when Moreau was in the lineup, and should be better next year. With a healthy Torres and Glencross, and hopefully a healthy Moreau and Souray they should be okay, but it sounds like Hemsky misses having Big Georges riding shotgun anyway. The problem is, the Oilers are already overstocked at every position but goalie, and I can’t see Lowe trading for Ray Emery just to make Hemsky feel a little better.

I upgraded to MT 4.1-OS just now. Aside from having to rebuild all my pages (and the tag cloud apparently getting semi-busted), I had a minor panic during the upgrade, getting this error:

undefined type: at lib/MT/Upgrade.pm line 1316

Fortunately, this forum post helped, but the actual lines you want in lib/MT/ObjectDriver/DDL.pm line 410 are:

    }  elsif ($type == SQL_FLOAT) { 
          return 'float'; 
    }

not SQLFLOAT, as Jayson says. (Watch your braces!) Looks like this is only really an issue with PostgreSQL, which might explain why this bug hasn't been fixed in a release version for well over a month.

I'd have posted a correction there, but I didn't feel like navigating their registration. (Probably I could use OpenID, but I keep forgetting my username and password...)

Aside from those minor quibbles, things seem to have gone ok, so, yay me.

I hate it when the Sportsnet guys copy me. Watching the game last night (ok, I started this post quite some time ago), I commented to my wife "they're going to be in some trouble next year," and expanded when she asked why. The return of Torres, Moreau, and Horcoff is going to make for some difficult decisions for Lowe and MacTavish.

This has already been covered a billion times in other places, but what's the point of having a blawwwg if I don't paraphrase what everybody else has said?

Issues to keep in mind when considering the future of this roster:

1) salary cap. I won't address salaries. Let's assume everybody Lowe wants to sign does so for reasonable sums, and that defencemen (Pitkanen, Gilbert) won't affect this. Having said that, I think it's safe to assume Stoll doesn't get a raise this year. With any luck, he feels as bad as Adam Oates did about his lack of production this year and takes a cut, but I won't presume to read his mind.

2) budget. Who knows what Katz will do? Hopefully he lets Lowe spend to the cap.

3) RFA raids. Everybody thinks Lowe left himself open with his moves last year. I don't agree. Penner's not been lights-out, and that's gotta have some effect on the thinking of other GMs. The other most recent attempts (Vanek, Kesler) didn't earn their new salaries their first year either. Without debating the wisdom of the players given offer sheets, I think it's safe to say that Edmonton's forwards are safe next year from signings of this sort; there's better quality available.

4) reserve list. This has been well-documented as well. Edmonton's close to, if not at, the limit. Fortunately, part of that reason is they have a lot of forwards, and that's exactly what we're talking about here.

As of now, assuming a healthy roster, the forward depth chart looks something like this, with players listed at their 'natural' position. Parentheses mark current AHLers, square brackets possible signings in the system. (The Oilers site still lists Thoresen. Oops.) I haven't included every single guy who's laced up skates this year and lines up at centre ice at the start of a game, just the guys most likely to get called up or signed for 2008-09.

Centre (11): Horcoff, Gagner, Stoll, Cogliano, Brodziak, Reasoner, Pouliot, (Schremp), (Trukhno), (Spurgeon), (O'Marra)

Left wing (7): Penner, Torres, Moreau, Glencross, Sanderson, (J-F Jacques), [Bumagin]

Right wing (7): Hemsky, Nilsson, Pisani, Stortini, (McDonald), (Goulet), [Mikhnov]

That's a lot of centres. The situation is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that some guys like Cogliano seem pretty well suited to playing another position, but still, that's way too many bodies for too few many roster spots. Then there's the already-problematic reserve list. Others have looked at likely budgets and cap numbers for next year, so I won't redo their work. Plus, it's safe to assume that everybody who's still wanted can fit somehow. Obviously the blueline decisions will play into things, but the logjam there isn't as bad.

Left wing has always been the weak spot for the Oilers, and next season shouldn't be much different. Penner's a lock, Glencross's spot is his to lose after the last 20 games, Moreau isn't likely going anywhere but has turned into glassman, and Torres has a spot too, but is streaky as hell. Jacques can't buy an NHL point, and Glencross took his spot anyway.

On the other side, Hemsky and Pisani are always a lock, Nilsson (as of Friday) has a new contract and won't be going anywhere soon, and Stortini's got a fairly unique role. Just like centre ice, only not quite as jammed.

Sanderson and Reasoner are unrestricted free agents. It's a good bet that Sandy's gone next year - another old warhorse retiring with a partial mediocre season as an Oiler - and it's hard to make a strong case for Reasoner to return. I love the guy, he'll do anything he can to help the team and his return to form after his injury and clearing waivers is heartwarming, plus he's funny as hell (what American college guy isn't?) but business is business. Brodziak can likely fill Reasoner's spot, with Cogliano taking Reasoner's slot on the penalty kill, and hey, Greene's still around for the resident-American-funnyman. MacTavish has a soft spot for Marty - and with good reason - so it's possible he gets a contract anyway, but unless Brodziak takes a step backwards, it's unlikely he'll see much more than 4th line + PK duty at best.

Schremp needs NHL time or a trade next season. He's probably not a terribly valuable asset right now, but he's got to be worth something to somebody. It seems pretty clear based on his play and comments by various coaches that he's just not going to work either as a centre or a winger on the bottom set of lines, which means he needs to bump both Gagner and Stoll. And since we're talking Gagner, the Conga Line (I like that one best, Young Guns and Kid Line are all passe) is busted up, so he'll need to be better than Cogliano too.

What would I do, if I were KLowe? Give Gagner, Nilsson, and Cogliano training camp and the first bit of the season to prove this season wasn't a fluke. Horcoff, Hemsky, and Penner played fairly well together before Horc went down, and Penner looked lost after that - give them a shot too.

That leaves the bottom six. Stoll gets a mulligan on this season, as does Torres - both of them can play tough minutes, put Pisani on their other wing and there's a nice checking line. Fourth line is tough, Moreau needs to play but Glencross deserves a spot too, and Stortini was surprisingly effective down the stretch. Brodziak, Reasoner, and Pouliot all could be effective centering that line. Still, let Reasoner go, let Brodziak and Pouliot fight it out for the 4th centre position. Give Schremp a long look during TC with some good linemates (Gagner and Moreau maybe, since he did a good job babysitting Hemsky), and see if O'Marra can play a checking line role. Dark horses are Lowetide's favourite Trukhno and Spurgeon. But I'd be pushing hard to move some of those players at the draft; maybe Lowe can find a place for Reasoner after all, even if it is part-time PB duty and injury insurance.

However you cut it, it should be an interesting season, even if Lowe makes no changes. The team hasn't been good the last couple of years, but this doesn't feel like a reprisal of 1994, with one or two bright spots and a bunch of has-beens and never-will-bes.

(Update: wrong timestamp, the original one got put on. Sorry if this shows up in your RSS readers twice.)

A weasel word you see a lot where opinions are offered (so anywhere online) is "personally".

Usually it's used like this: "Personally, I think ..." or "Personally, the reason for that is ..." The first usage is just redundant, but the second isn't even in the same ballpark as grammatically correct. I think I know where this comes from, although I lack the vocabulary to describe it pithily. It's used as a sort of deflector; I know that comments and posts that don't include this sort of weaselling tend to get attacked more than those that do. It's like saying "Personally, you're an asshole" is somehow more acceptable than saying "You're wrong, and here's why." "Well, that's just, like, your OPINION man" is the last refuge of somebody who's lost an argument and doesn't know how to admit it.

While the motivation is understandable, that doesn't make this word any less loathsome. By now I should admit to being somewhat of a Zinsser disciple, and while words like "personally" have a place, modifying or replacing statements like "In my opinion" isn't that place. In fact, as Zinsser would say, you don't even need to say "This is my opinion" - that's already obvious, and saying so is a waste of time. It's your opinion, state it and back it, and to hell with those who would divert the argument by pointing out the obvious.

Of course, that's just personally my opinion.

PunjabiOil has a little pool going. I'm game - no analysis, just gut feeling. Maybe I'll get my cats to walk around randomly on a piece of paper, and we can see who does better.

SERIES A #1 Montreal vs. #8 Boston: Montreal in 5.

SERIES B #2 Pittsburgh vs. #7 Ottawa: Pittsburgh in 5.

SERIES C #3 Washington vs. #6 Philadelphia: Washington in 6.

SERIES D #4 New Jersey vs. #5 NY Rangers: NJD in 6.

SERIES E #1 Detroit vs. #8 Nashville: Detroit in 7.

SERIES F #2 San Jose vs. #7 Calgary: San Jose in 4. (OK, I'm voting with my heart on that one, not guts, but San Jose's a great team.)

SERIES G #3 Minnesota vs. #6 Colorado: Minnesota in 7.

SERIES H #4 Anaheim vs. #5 Dallas: Anaheim in 6.

I just upgraded my primary Linux workstation to Ubuntu 8.04 (I was waiting for some other things to happen anyway, so I had some dead time) and had a bit of difficulty getting things going. However, this post was handy sorting things out.

I found it was easiest to extract the vmware-any-any patch (from here since the other post doesn't link directly to it) then make the vcpuset.h change discussed in the first post, and tar it back up again, then run the any-any patch's runme.pl script.

I did find that I had to cp the libgcc_s and libpng12 libraries as described at the bottom of the Federkiel post.

And on the heels of the computer theft story, this one popped up. An accountant in Vancouver figured the lock on a dumpster would keep people from getting at the documents he put into it.

There's really nothing more to say. Who needs to break into computer systems to get personal information when the people we hire to do our taxes and divorces and such are willing to give the information away to anybody with a bolt cutter? I'm sure that most of the people that break into dumpsters aren't after personal information, they're probably after junk they can fix up and sell or whatever, but all it takes is one person who is an ID thief, and somebody too cheap to get a shredder just gave away his clients.

Have you asked the fellow who does your taxes what he does with draft documents? Maybe you should.

Several computers were stolen in a school district in Newfoundland & Labrador. Not normally terribly exciting news any more, unless it happens to be your school district, although the President of the Federation of School Councils there actually seems to get it:

In both cases, data were password-protected, although Hoskins said that offers little comfort.

"There's always people out there that can hack into any type of system, no matter how secure or what protocols are put in place. So I think it's a serious issue that has to be addressed," she said.

In this case, chances are the "password protection" is little more than a requirement for a username and password to be able to log in. Something I try to impress on every high school co-op I have: if I have physical access to your computer, that can't stop me. It's nice to see senior administration anywhere acknowledging this.