dsandler.org/wp

Archive for August, 2005

Trackback Validator plugin v0.5

Wednesday, August 24th, 2005

The Computer Security Lab at Rice just released the first public version of the Trackback Validator plugin for WordPress blogs. Since I’ve been using it, I’ve had 100% classification accuracy on Trackbacks (read: every legit Trackback makes it through, not a single spam Trackback). Maybe Trackback isn’t quite so dead after all.

Posted in Notebook | 1 Comment »

Talk talk.

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005

So Google Talk is live. It appears to be a Jabber service at talk.google.com for GMail users (try it! your Jabber ID is you@gmail.com) with some VoIP extensions for you if you use the Google Brand™ Jabber client (Windows only).

[If you want to talk to me, my JID (and therefore my GMail address) is my first name (short version), dot, last name, at, gmail dot com.]

Also be sure to check out their Developers FAQ, which offers some slightly deeper details on the app:

4. Do you plan to support other real-time communication protocols?

Google Talk supports XMPP with the beta release. We plan to support SIP in a future release. Additionally, we will evaluate other protocols as appropriate, to continue to deliver on our commitment to open communications.

5. What protocols are used for voice calls?

Google Talk supports a custom XMPP-based signaling protocol and peer-to-peer communication mechanism. We will fully document this protocol. In the near future, we plan to support SIP signaling.

Posted in Notebook | No Comments »

Greatly exaggerated.

Monday, August 22nd, 2005

Um, so, in the words of Australia, double you tee eff, mate? According to an RSS advocacy piece, advertised without commentary on that great green geek site, RSS’ Win, Signals Atom’s Death Toll [sic].

The thrust of the article is that, because Atom hasn’t erased RSS from the face of the earth, it is “dead” and RSS has “won”. Evidence? Microsoft’s support of RSS in Windows Vista (despite demonstrable evidence that Longhorn ❤ Atom) and Google’s support of RSS as well as Atom in its new Google Desktop 2.0. Consider the statement:

In the past Google had strategically steered clear of endorsing the RSS specification hoping that Atom, would take hold. Google’s recent new service that allows web surfers to monitor Google News using either RSS or Atom feeds, appears to be an acknowledgment that perhaps in purchasing Blogger, they chose the wrong specification.

Let me offer another possible explanation: Maybe RSS has greater mindshare (among the 9% of Internet users who are familiar with news feed technology) and is much more widely deployed in client software. In this case, to restrict Google News to emitting only Atom feeds would unnecessarily limit Google’s audience.

To say that the inclusion of the quite-popular RSS alongside the up-and-comer Atom means that “Atom is dying” is akin to saying that Google’s support of Internet Explorer represents the last nail in the coffin of Firefox, which it has also always supported.

Posted in Notebook | No Comments »

Google Desktop 2.0

Monday, August 22nd, 2005

Google Desktop version 2 is out, including a new RSS-reading desktop sidebar. Just in case you’re keeping track, the Google euphemism for RSS feeds is “Web Clips”:

Read RSS and Atom feeds from the web. Click on an item to read the entire clip’s content in the details pane. Feeds are generally updated every 30 minutes. In Options, you can manually add a feed by entering its URL, or select a recent feed to add by clicking the “Add Recent Clips” button. Feeds are automatically added based on the web pages you visit, unless you uncheck the “Automatically add commonly viewed clips” checkbox.

Posted in Notebook | No Comments »

Back to school.

Sunday, August 21st, 2005

Classes start tomorrow. I went ahead and updated my student webpage to reflect my fall courseload (surprisingly heavy, given that I’ve already met the coursework requirements for my degree) and teaching assistance.

(I will be a School of Engineering teaching assistant for the intro CS course, which, it turns out, is a bit different from being a regular old departmental TA. For one thing, in addition to the usual lab sections and grading, I’ll deliver a few actual class lectures.)

Posted in Notebook | No Comments »

Slashdot + FeedBurner

Sunday, August 21st, 2005

Hey, when did Slashdot sign up with FeedBurner?

$ curl -I http://slashdot.org/index.rss
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 02:44:23 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a mod_perl/1.29
Location: http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
$ host rss.slashdot.org
rss.slashdot.org is an alias for feeds.feedburner.com.
feeds.feedburner.com has address 66.150.96.111

Posted in Notebook | No Comments »

Lightning

Thursday, August 18th, 2005

Around 4:15, I noticed the lights in my office dim, flicker, and fade. My G5 winked off, as did the LED inside my PowerBook’s charger cable. About a second later, a rumble confirmed that lightning had struck somewhere near Rice and taken out our power. The emergency generator continued to operate some essential lights (and, oddly, the 802.11 base stations, which I guess must be attached to the same circuit).

Power was restored about a half-hour later, but the network didn’t come up immediately, so I left. It appears to still be down:

$ traceroute rice.edu
traceroute to rice.edu (128.42.5.4), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  10.49.128.1 (10.49.128.1) 670.315 ms 17.596 ms 21.082 ms
 2  pos5-3.hstntxroy-rtr1.houston.rr.com (24.28.96.69) 16.623 ms 20.051 ms 17.799 ms
 3  srp13-0.hstntxtid-rtr1.houston.rr.com (24.28.100.17) 15.267 ms 15.873 ms 11.956 ms
 4  pos9-0.hstntxtid-rtr4.texas.rr.com (24.93.34.94) 17.817 ms 14.901 ms 48.264 ms
 5  * * *

Posted in Notebook | No Comments »