Craig Small: Book: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Actually they're more interested in freedom, to be no longer slaves to humans. I don't think it's any spoiler to mention that an electric sheep does appear in the book.
This is a classic science fiction story of a dark not-so-distant future. In fact given that it's over 40 years old it could be set in some alternate now. Some disaster has occurred and many have either left earth or died. Some andriods, or andys have escaped and bounty hunters are after them.
You may not know the book by its correct title, but you may of heard the movie that is based upon it, called Blade Runner. Like most movies based on books, it takes some of the concepts and ideas of the book but in my opinion is a pale imitation.
I'm glad I read this book. It hasn't aged that much and it's very though provoking. Sci-Fi often uses some alternate reality to put a mirror up to what happens in the real world and this book is no exception.
And a token link to Debian, if you want you own electric sheep you can install the screensaver electricsheep package which draw pretty fractals on your screen.
This is a classic science fiction story of a dark not-so-distant future. In fact given that it's over 40 years old it could be set in some alternate now. Some disaster has occurred and many have either left earth or died. Some andriods, or andys have escaped and bounty hunters are after them.
You may not know the book by its correct title, but you may of heard the movie that is based upon it, called Blade Runner. Like most movies based on books, it takes some of the concepts and ideas of the book but in my opinion is a pale imitation.
I'm glad I read this book. It hasn't aged that much and it's very though provoking. Sci-Fi often uses some alternate reality to put a mirror up to what happens in the real world and this book is no exception.
And a token link to Debian, if you want you own electric sheep you can install the screensaver electricsheep package which draw pretty fractals on your screen.
again, a short overview regarding my RC bug activities:
Since the recent announce of 
After several other Debian developers convinced me that a ShortURL service,
which is under control of a Debian Developer would be useful for them, I've
spent some time to write the necessary code for it. And if it will be used
regulary, I'll ask DSA if they want to host it on a proper machine.
So I'm happy to announce the public beta test of 
As this should not become just another random, spammer-attracting ShortURL
service, I will not provide a web based form to add new URLs. Instead new URLs
have to be added via a simple JSON-RPC based interface. Other ways to add new
URLs will be added on request (or by sending patches ;)), at least an
email-gateway similar to db.debian.org is planned.
The small piece of documentation which exists so far is available at
A scandal has been brewing in Latvia over the last half year and yesterday the activity spiked shocking the media and some IT people in the country. I ll go back and explain what happened first, what is happening now and why this could have a heavy impact on IT and journalists in Latvia.
At the end of last year, there were rumours that the IT system of Latvia s Internal Revenue System was hacked and millions of documents had been downloaded by multiple organizations. Shortly thereafter more details on the glaring security hole became public (after it was closed).
There is a full electronic interface to give all reports to the IRS electronically (at http://eds.vid.gov.lv) and as part of that system you could also view and export monthly report summaries about your organization into XML and PDF files. After the system checked that you are authorized to access the report, you were redirected to the URL to actually download the report by report ID (as a single param in a GET request). Unfortunately, report IDs were predicable and the script that gave the reports for download did not check if you were authorized to get that report. It did not even check if were logged into the system.
There were suspicions that the authorization was disabled on purpose to allow to leak data on purpose, but apparently it was an error of forgetting to disable debug code in production environment.
The error was discovered only because the firewall administrator noticed an unexplained stable increase of traffic, especially during night hours when typically the traffic fully stopped. Apparently a single hacker (who later identified himself as Neo to the press) discovered the flaw and wrote a script to just try all possible report ids and get as much data out as possible. This had been going on for months, before someone noticed.
After the flaw was discovered and a bit of time passed, Neo made his first move he published the list of top salaries in a governmental company, that clearly showed that the top leadership of this company failed to cut their salary by 40%, like everyone elses during harsh budget cuts of 2009. He stripped the names and ids of the specific employees, but named the company which made it pretty easy to figure out who was who.
The society was outraged that the top managers in a government owned company failed to comply with the strict pay cut that everyone else in government had to endure. But after a few weeks the outrage subsided and no action followed from the government or law enforcement.
Neo continued to release documents detailing salaries of top managers in different Latvian government companies. And each time after short outrage, nothing happened. Neo gave an interview where he said that he was disappointed in the passivity of the Latvian people in face of such blatant injustices.
After a few month Neo went silent, promising to return before parliamentary elections this fall.
However, this week a new development shocked everyone in the middle of the night two police SWAT teams went into action: one detained Ilm rs Poik ns, a researcher in artificial intelligence at the University of Latvia s Computer Science department and another raided the home of a Latvian TV journalist Ilze Nagle who interviewed Neo. Poik ns confessed of being Neo the next day and was released (with travel restrictions, pending trial) today.
Politicians reacted immediately opposition demanded the resignation of the Interior Minister over such blatant disregard of freedom of press and another politician (who is also a famous lawyer) Aleksejs Loskutovs volunteered to defend Neo pro-bono (on Twitter, no less). Almost all Latvian online media have the arrest of Neo and the raid on the home of a journalist as main stories of the day.
As a legal titbit, we also know that Neo is being charged with breaking statutes 145 and and 244p2 of the criminal law. Statute 145 is hard to find applicable in this situation as talks about actions done by people authorized (..) to access [private] information . Statute 244p2 will also be hard to pin down as it mentions influencing system resources of (an IT system) and if such action caused severe harm . It looks like the first part talks about at least a DoS attack (which did not happen in this case) and also there was no measurable harm from these leaks.
Also Neo was careful to strip all personally identifying information (such as names, social security numbers and addresses of the employees in question), so it will be hard to pin him on that. Also no actual breaking or other modification of an IT system occurred. And no specialized software was used beyond a trivial script such as :
While working on 
What Next?
I ve sent email to the LinkWithin people about all these issues other than the FireBug problem reports, given that they haven t responded to some suggestions for over 10 weeks it seems hardly worth my effort in informing them of other issues.
I m thinking of trying 
Last weekend, I went to the Grenslandhallen in Hasselt, to see
Belgium compete against Estonia in a Fed Cup tie of the World Group
playoffs. The winner of this tie would gain a seat in the top-tier World
Group next year, which opens the possibility of winning this
competition.
The Belgian team was the strongest possible one, with all four best
Belgian female tennis players Yanina Wickmayer, Kim Clijsters,
Justine Henin, and Kirsten Flipkens. On paper, the team should not have
had any problems beating the Estonian team.
Unfortunately, Justine fractured her pinky finger during practice on
wednesday; and while it did not make it impossible for her to play, it
did reduce her fitness somewhat, which meant that on Saturday, Kim and
Yanina had to defend the Belgian colors. They did and won, but then Kim
injured some muscle in her foot, which made it hard for her to walk on
Sunday, let alone play.
With only Justine, Yanina, and Kirsten available, coach Appelmans
chose to put Justine on the field. Though she made a valiant effort, she
unfortunately did not manage to beat an unleashed Kaia Kanepi,
who it must be said played a terrific match. As such, it
fell on Yanina to bring home the tie in the fourth singles rubber
against Maret Ani. Being a bit nervous in the start of the first set,
she made some unnecessary errors; but after a few games, she came
through and started to play much better. Unfortunately, by that time the
score was already at 5-1. Yanina won her first service game of the match
to bring it to 5-2, but it wasn't enough, and Ani won the first set
somewhat easily.
She couldn't put anything on the table against a storming Wickmayer,
however, and after two more sets, the outcome of the match and, by
extension, the tie was clear: a win for Belgium.
I can't help but note that Wickmayer has been a great player for the
Belgian fed cup team these past few years, however. Since her first Fed
Cup participation in 2007, she holds what is, given her ranking at the
time, a rather impressive 9-4 win-loss record in Fed Cup. If it wasn't
for Wickmayer, the Belgian team would not be where it is now. It was
Wickmayer who won her three matches against Canada, one as part of a
doubles team, to prevent demotion from world group II to the
Europe/Africa zone back in 2009, with a 3-2 score. It was Wickmayer who
won the crucial third rubber against higher-ranked Radwanska in February
to beat Poland, with the latter even holding the home field advantage.
And it's now been Wickmayer who won two of the three rubbers against
Estonia that were needed to win the tie.
So Congrats, Yanina!