Rudy Rucker
Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician and a computer scientist. Born in Kentucky in 1946, Rucker moved to Silicon Valley when he turned 40. Rucker has published twenty-five books, primarily science-fiction and popular science. He was an early cyberpunk and an editor at Mondo 2000. He often writes SF in a style is characterized as transreal. His most recent novels were Frek and the Elixir, a far-future epic about a boy's galactic quest to restore Earth's ecology and As Above So Below, a historical novel based on the life of the sixteenth century painter Peter Bruegel. Rucker is a professor emeritus of computer science at San Jose State University, where he created a number of freeware programs relating to chaos, artificial life, cellular automata, higher dimensions, and computer games. He is presently working on The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul, a nonfiction book about computers and the nature of reality. Rucker's website can be found at www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker or at www.rudyrucker.com.
Monkeys for sale
posted by karen marcelo at 5:27:54 PM | permalink
Pollock and Fractals
This article talks about how Jackson Pollock's work models chaos and fractal theories before they were consciously and publicly articulated.
Link   Discuss Thanks Bryson posted by karen marcelo at 4:55:25 PM | permalink
DNS for Dummies
WARNING: Not for the easily offended. Click on that link but don't complain afterwards.
Discuss Thanks bms posted by karen marcelo at 4:33:52 PM | permalink
Cat Transformation Sets
Transform your cat into something else. Japanese cat outfits with priceless engrish:
posted by karen marcelo at 6:40:51 PM | permalink
Electric Jacket
A cool 80,000 volt jacket that defends against unwanted touching.
Video here. Just in: I am informed that the electric drive unit needs to be upgraded as it is only rated for 1 second burts into free air. It can deliver longer bursts into a human load however it would have to be significantly longer to effectively disarm the violet wand crowd.
Link Discuss (thanks polymorf) posted by karen marcelo at 5:15:14 PM | permalink
Girls are Pretty
Visit this site for ideas on what to do daily
Link Discuss (Thank you, /lastlog) posted by karen marcelo at 11:02:36 AM | permalink
DIY Cruise Missile
This guy claims that he can build one for $5k and for a fee will send you the project diary and other documentation. Sounds like a challenge to others who could make one for less or a better one for $5k. See that industry go the way of the dot crash.
Link   Discuss (Thanks, Michael) posted by karen marcelo at 10:46:41 AM | permalink
Warthog Jump
This is old but came across it again recently. The impressive physics engine in Bungie's Halo allows one to blow warthogs sky high over this mountain on the beach. Not how the game was intended to be played, and not that easy to do (you have to stockpile enough grenades near the tanks and hit it with another grenade the right way) to get this effect, but still a fine piece of machinima... Video can be found here. Randy Glass who got this to happen and made the video shows how you can recreate this
posted by karen marcelo at 10:57:57 AM | permalink
Lego Mac on Ebay
posted by karen marcelo at 10:50:22 AM | permalink
Trinity gets root
So as the Trinity using nmap, sshing in, and getting root meme makes its rounds on the net, it's almost like the biggest disappointment of the film
isn't the plot or the amazing fx, but that they used some 10.something ip address in that scene. Takes all the fun out for people who'd want to try for themselves. The film creators should've put a honeypot on a 'real' ip address just to see who tries to 0wn the machine.
While the sploit they used in the film sshnuke is fictional, in real life there is sshmagic which you can't Google for because someone did a damn good job of keeping this really quiet (or the whole thing could be made up).
Unlike the fictional sshnuke which uses the SSHv1 CRC32 exploit, sshmagic is a client side trojan that poisons the PLT to provide a means of key retrieval. But one would have to compromise the target system first.
What can likely be found on the net are some hints at a possible PLT poisoning technique using inline socket and mmap calls in chained payload attacks. After "the attacker smashes the stack, or is able to inject and execute a small amount of arbitrary code, and that the process runs with regular user credentials (can allocate memory, can read files, can create a socket etc) then further code may be injected to form the action the attacker really intended". The idea behind it isn't so much to 'get root' but to 'keep root'.
posted by karen marcelo at 11:53:14 PM | permalink
Chicken transformation set Price: 3,800 YEN (according to tax)
This is a dear chicken transformation set. It is made from the two-tone felt cloth of yellow and orange, and even if it takes, it is finished to the pop impression. Please observe the feather of the chicken currently attached to the both sides of a hat. please imagine a profile when a cat covers it is as dear as it blows off involuntarily -- since it can equip with the head volume to which the reed of a chicken also attached hat on a piece of Velcro, attachment and detachment are easy