Computer Laboratory – Technical reports: UCAM-CL-TR-754

Computer Laboratory – Technical reports: UCAM-CL-TR-754:
"Understanding scam victims: seven principles for systems security

Frank Stajano, Paul Wilson

The success of many attacks on computer systems can be traced back to the security engineers not understanding the psychology of the system users they meant to protect. We examine a variety of scams and “short cons” that were investigated, documented and recreated for the BBC TV programme The Real Hustle and we extract from them some general principles about the recurring behavioural patterns of victims that hustlers have learnt to exploit.

We argue that an understanding of these inherent “human factors” vulnerabilities, and the necessity to take them into account during design rather than na�vely shifting the blame onto the “gullible users”, is a fundamental paradigm shift for the security engineer which, if adopted, will lead to stronger and more resilient systems security."

four: New HTTP Parser

four: New HTTP Parser: "I've implemented a new HTTP/1.1 request and response parser by hand. (My previous parser was written with the help of Ragel.) It requires 124 bytes per HTTP connection, makes zero allocations, has no dependencies, is nearly optimal in its use of CPU instructions, interruptible on any character, has extensive tests, and is MIT licensed."

ScreenMath.com :: HDTV Plasma and LCD Screen Size Guide

ScreenMath.com :: HDTV Plasma and LCD Screen Size Guide: "To find the HDTV screen size (diagonal measure) that gives the same height as your old television, take the screen size of the old TV and multiply by 1.22. So if you want an HDTV with a screen that's the same height as your old 34-inch TV, for example, the chart below shows that you need to buy an HDTV with a 42-inch screen, and that they will both have a height of 20.4 inches."

Safari Books Online - ACM - Home

Safari Books Online - ACM - Home: "ACM has partnered with Safari Books Online to provide members like you with a searchable, on-demand digital library with 600 hand-picked titles from over 9,800 books and videos available through Safari Books Online."

Charming Python: Easy Web data collection with mechanize and Beautiful Soup

Charming Python: Easy Web data collection with mechanize and Beautiful Soup: "At this point, we are done with mechanize; all that is left is to make some sense of that big bunch of HTML files we saved during the fetch() loop. The batch nature of the process lets me separate these cleanly, but obviously in a different program, fetch() and process() might interact more closely. Beautiful Soup makes the post-processing even easier than the initial fetch."

RunOnNginx – uWSGI

RunOnNginx – uWSGI:

"Running uWSGI behind Nginx �

In the 'nginx' directory of the distribution you will find the uwsgi handler for nginx.

Download a 0.7.x (stable) release of nginx and untar it at the same level of your uwsgi distribution directory"

Daring Fireball: A Liberal, Accurate Regex Pattern for Matching URLs

Daring Fireball: A Liberal, Accurate Regex Pattern for Matching URLs:

\b(([\w-] ://?|www[.])[^\s()<>] (?:\([\w\d] \)|([^[:punct:]\s]|/)))

"-------------------------------------------
T h e T a o O f P r o g r a m m i n g
-------------------------------------------
T r a n s l a t e d B y G e o f f r e y J a m e s"

Tunnell-Braun - KTBCS, KTB-IS, Skinner Editorial

Tunnell-Braun - KTBCS, KTB-IS, Skinner Editorial: "Tunnell-Braun Enterprises is the umbrella under which Karl Tunnell-Braun operates various endeavors."

How a Self-Educated HS Dropout Became the Youngest Manager at Apple - Buccaneer scholar - Gizmodo

How a Self-Educated HS Dropout Became the Youngest Manager at Apple - Buccaneer scholar - Gizmodo: "James Bach, a legend in the software-testing field, just published Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar, the tale of how he dropped out of school, became a self-taught games programmer, and scored a sweet gig at Apple—all before turning 21."

Atari Video Games | Arcade

Atari Video Games | Arcade: "Atari Arcade is the place to find beloved Atari classics including Asteroids and Lunar Lander. You can play them all here online, any time and free of charge."

Build your entrepreneurial confidence. Try these tips on for size.�|�JonBischke.com

Build your entrepreneurial confidence. Try these tips on for size.�|�JonBischke.com: "Entrepreneurship is hard. You’re going to go through moments where you feel like you’re on top of the world. And then you’re going to experience moment when you think the world is going to come to an end. And often those moments will occur within the same hour of the day.

When you get a little down on your luck (and we’re all there at some point in time), here’s a good little reading list (along with some comments) and a few videos for you."

uWSGI

uWSGI: "uWSGI is a fast (pure C), self-healing, developer-friendly WSGI server, aimed for professional python webapps deployment and development."

Richard Dingwall � The trouble with soft delete

Richard Dingwall � The trouble with soft delete: "Check out the book “Developing Time Oriented Database Application in SQL” for a systematic look at some options for storing historical data. A wider topic than just soft deletion, but related.

It’s out of print and the author made it available on his site:
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/rts/tdbbook.pdf"

Good Question! The Eight Best Questions We Got While Raising Venture Capital

Good Question! The Eight Best Questions We Got While Raising Venture Capital: "VCs are good at asking questions. They are unimplicated in your dumb decisions, unmoved by your original sense of mission and far less concerned than you that a blunder could bankrupt you. They re-imagine your business in terms of all the other businesses they’ve seen, pulling the arms off one doll and the head off another to create a perfect money-making Frankenstein. And since the stakes are high, the whole philosophical exercise tends to result in action.

Here are the questions VCs asked Redfin that changed how we think about our business."

How to Make a Million Dollars, by Marshall Brain

How to Make a Million Dollars, by Marshall Brain: "How to make a million dollars is: a) something students are interested in, and b) something I am qualified to talk about. And the talk went really well."

10 CHINDOGU TENENTS � International Chindogu Society

10 CHINDOGU TENENTS � International Chindogu Society: "Every Chindogu is an almost useless object, but not every almost useless object is a Chindogu. In order to transcend the realms of the merely almost useless, and join the ranks of the really almost useless, certain vital criteria must be met. It is these criteria, a set of ten vital tenets, that define the gentle art and philosophy of Chindogu."

papert: logo in your browser

papert: logo in your browser: "this is free software, and papert is hosted on google code"

Beowulf Page 1

Beowulf Page 1: "Since Beowulf is written in Old English, the earliest known form of the English language, one might assume that it would be easy to translate, at least easier than works printed in languages more substantially different from modern English. Yet looking at the many translations of Beowulf that are available in bookstores and libraries, it's immediately apparent that they have important differences in language, form, and style. This immediately raises the questions: Why are these translations so different? And how can I decide which, if any, is the 'best' to read?"

Comparison of different SQL implementations

Comparison of different SQL implementations: "The following tables compare how different DBMS products handle various SQL (and related) features. If possible, the tables also state how the implementations should do things, according to the SQL standard."

David Friedman, _Price Theory: An Intermediate Text_ Ch 1

David Friedman, _Price Theory: An Intermediate Text_ Ch 1: "Economics is that way of understanding behavior that starts from the assumption that people have objectives and tend to choose the correct way to achieve them."

G.K. Chesterton: Author's Page at Ignatius Insight

G.K. Chesterton: Author's Page at Ignatius Insight: "this was the man who wrote a book called The Everlasting Man, which led a young atheist named C.S. Lewis to become a Christian. This was the man who wrote a novel called The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish Independence. This was the man who wrote an essay in the Illustrated London News that inspired Mohandas Gandhi to lead a movement to end British colonial rule in India."

Amelia Earhart was too much of an icon to make an interesting moving character.

Amelia Earhart was too much of an icon to make an interesting moving character.: "Glamour is an imaginative experience, charisma a personal characteristic. A place, an idea, even an object can be glamorous, but only a person can be charismatic. A still photograph best captures glamour; a live performance most powerfully conveys charisma. Glamour operates at a distance; it requires mystery, allowing the audience to fill in the details with its own desires. Charisma works through personal contact. It draws the audience to share the charismatic figure’s own commitments. Charisma enhances leadership; glamour enhances sales."

Mac ODBC: Database connectivity for Mac OS X by Actual Technologies

Mac ODBC: Database connectivity for Mac OS X by Actual Technologies: "Applications that use SQLite databases

Which applications use SQLite to store program data?
Many applications on Mac OS X use SQLite to store information - including Apple's own Safari and Mail applications. You can use the Actual ODBC Driver for Open Source Databases to import the information stored in the database into an ODBC-ready application, such as Excel, FileMaker Pro, or even a PHP web page."

Distinctive Features Of SQLite

Distinctive Features Of SQLite:

"Instead of a license, the SQLite source code offers a blessing:

May you do good and not evil
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others
May you share freely, never taking more than you give."

An Introduction to SQLite

Using SQLite database files as the native application data format

Size isn't everything for the modest creator of SQLite

mac apps:
apps:

skype
flipshare
firefox

iphone,android

ORACLE - DBA Tips Corner

ORACLE - DBA Tips Corner: "The BECOME USER System Privilege

"Oracle has an undocumented OCI function called upicui that will allow a given oracle user to become another user. This user has to have the 'BECOME USER' system privilege."

Writing great documentation: what to write

Writing great documentation: what to write: "Tech docs can take a bunch of different forms ranging from high-level overviews, to step-by-step walkthroughs, to auto-generated API documentation. Unfortunately, no single format works for all users; there’s huge differences in the way that people learn, so a well-documented project needs to provide many different forms of documentation."

What Makes Them Click � Blog Archive � 100 Things You Should Know About People: #8 — Dopamine Makes Us Addicted To Seeking Information - Applying Psychology to Understand How People Think, Work, and Relate

What Makes Them Click � Blog Archive � 100 Things You Should Know About People: #8 — Dopamine Makes Us Addicted To Seeking Information - Applying Psychology to Understand How People Think, Work, and Relate: "A dopamine induced loop – With the internet, twitter, and texting we now have almost instant gratification of our desire to seek. Want to talk to someone right away? Send a text and they respond in a few seconds. Want to look up some information? Just type it into google. What to see what your friends are up to? Go to twitter or facebook. We get into a dopamine induced loop… dopamine starts us seeking, then we get rewarded for the seeking which makes us seek more. It becomes harder and harder to stop looking at email, stop texting, stop checking our cell phones to see if we have a message or a new text."

cyoa

cyoa: "In scanning over the distribution of colors in this plot, one clear pattern is a the gradual decline in the number of endings. The earliest books (in the top row) are awash in reds and oranges, with a healthy number of ‘winning’ endings mixed in. Later cyoa books tended to favor a single ‘best’ ending (see CYOA 44 & 53). The most extreme case of this was actually not a Choose Your Own Adventure book at all but a gamebook offshoot of the Zork text adventure series. The Cavern of Doom (labeled WDIDN 3 above) has a virtually linear progression where endings later in the book are increasingly better than those on earlier pages. This is reflected in the nearly unbroken spectrum from red to blue when scanning down the rows."

The Happiness Project: Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering.

The Happiness Project: Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering.: "One of my great realizations about happiness (and a point oddly under-emphasized by positive psychologists) is that outer order contributes to inner calm.

But as much as most of us want to keep our home, office, car, etc. in reasonable order, it’s tough. Here’s a list of some myths of de-cluttering that make it harder to get rid of stuff."

A Note on the Joel Test

Because we're not a pure software house but are instead in the movie business, we do a few things differently software development-wise. So, don't panic when Joel says "10 or lower, you've got serious problems." This is still a great place to work!

Here's a few notes on our Joel Score.

Do you use source control?

Yes, we use Perforce.

Can you make a build in one step?

Yes.

Do you make daily builds?

No. Because of the nature of our work, daily builds aren't useful for all projects. We do daily builds where it's useful.

Do you have a bug database?

Yes.

Do you fix bugs before writing new code?

Sometimes. Our priorities are driven by our movie release dates. In some cases it's more important to fix bugs, in others to add new features. We haven't missed a release date
yet!

Do you have an up-to-date schedule?

Yes, although our shifting, production-driven priorities mean that we need a lot more flexibility to quickly adjust our schedule.

Do you have a spec?

Yes.

Do programmers have quiet working conditions?

Yes. Our place is even nicer than Joel's place!

Do you use the best tools money can buy?

Yes.

Do you have testers?

Yes.

Do new candidates write code during their interview?

Yes.

Do you do hallway usability testing?

Yes.

Scary Anthropomorphic Foods Promote the British Food Standards Agency – Eat Me Daily

Scary Anthropomorphic Foods Promote the British Food Standards Agency – Eat Me Daily: "These series of short promos for the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in England show healthy foodstuffs talking with their unhealthy counterparts, ostensibly to promote Family Supercooks, a program about eating healthily."

Stossel in the Classroom

Stossel in the Classroom:

"A message from John Stossel:
Dear Educator,
I am excited to offer you high-quality classroom materials that teachers say bring lesson plans to life, encouraging students to think and participate, while serving your curriculum requirements."

Live Ships Map - AIS - Vessel Traffic and Positions

Live Ships Map - AIS - Vessel Traffic and Positions: "Vessel positions may be up to one hour old or incomplete. Data is provided for informational reasons only and is not related by any means to the safety of navigation."

The "NoSQL" Discussion has Nothing to Do With SQL | blog@CACM | Communications of the ACM

The "NoSQL" Discussion has Nothing to Do With SQL | blog@CACM | Communications of the ACM: "Using either stored procedures or embedding, the useful work component is a very small percentage of total transaction cost, for today’s OLTP data bases which usually fit in main memory. Instead, a recent paper [1] calculated that total OLTP time was divided almost equally between the following four overhead components:"

College for $99 a Month by Kevin Carey | Washington Monthly

College for $99 a Month by Kevin Carey | Washington Monthly: "The next generation of online education could be great for students—and catastrophic for universities."

Camino and Adblock Plus...who wants it? • mozillaZine Forums

Camino and Adblock Plus...who wants it? • mozillaZine Forums: "Next, update Netinfo Database by typing the following into Terminal:

sudo niload -v -m hosts . < /etc/hosts"

Manipulate Clipboard From Command Line - MacTips

Manipulate Clipboard From Command Line - MacTips: "An easy way to manipulate the clipboard from the command line is by using the pbcopy and pbpaste"

Figuring out what your company is all about - Joel on Software

Figuring out what your company is all about - Joel on Software: "Kathy taught me that if you can’t explain your mission in the form, “We help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING,” you are not going to have passionate users. What’s your tagline? Can you fit it into that template?"

The Volokh Conspiracy

The Volokh Conspiracy: "The basic lesson of Bayesian analysis is that you can learn only from information that disconfirms some part of your current belief set. But of course the natural tendency of the mind is to minimize cognitive dissonance by accepting confirming evidence and rejecting disconfirming evidence, and that tendency is emphasized when beliefs get to be badges of group membership.

This is a deeply unhealthy tendency, and it tends to defeat one of the basic evolutionary strategies of homo sapiens, which Karl Popper summed up as “letting our beliefs die in our place.” Unfortunately, it has been on full display in the comment threads to my posts, which consisted (when the comments related to the posts at all rather than merely ranting about unrelated topics) mostly of vigorous attempts to prove that the thoughts offered in the posts were worthless or wicked, and the poster an ill-intentioned idiot.

Eugene no doubt thought he was doing his readers a favor by offering them some reading that might challenge their precoceptions. There is little evidence in the comment thread that the VC readership shares that view, but it’s possible to hope that the comments are not a representative sample of reader reaction."

Start-up studies: A pop quiz | VentureBeat

Start-up studies: A pop quiz | VentureBeat: "There’s a classroom exercise that’s a part of the Stanford technology venture program hits its students with each year: If you had five dollars and two hours, what would you do to make as much money as possible? STVP Executive Director Tina Seelig discusses the query and how budding entrepreneurs responded."

Talking to DC � Adam Bosworth’s Weblog

Notes on writing a good standard: "Well, the discussion was about what actually will work in terms of making health data liquid. What standards should be used for the integration of such data?

1. Keep the standard as simple and stupid as possible.
2. The data being exchanged should be human readable and easy to understand.
3. Standards work best when they are focused.
4. Standards should have precise encodings.
5. Always have real implementations that are actually being used as part of design of any standard.
6. Put in hysteresis for the unexpected.
7. Make the spec itself free, public on the web, and include lots of simple examples on the web site.
"