General

zeroconf is a nifty suite of protocols that provide a number of interesting services for allocating IP addresses without any manual or automatic configuration (even without DHCP), name services without having to know a DNS server, automatic service discovery and allocating multicast IP addresses. The automatic IP address allocation is nothing special, it's "only" the 169.154.xxx.xxx IP addresses a lot of people know from trying to get a DHCP lease with the DHCP server down.



Parts of this whole thing are implemented as Rendezvous that many people know from Mac OS X. Today, I was searching for implementations for those different parts of zeroconf that actually run on Linux. First of all, there's the original implementation of the mDNSResponder package by Apple. I wasn't too impressed by it, although it does compile on Linux (it even compiles and links with dietlibc, so the Apple developers did a good job keeping the whole thing portable). Then I search further, and via this HOWTO on how to enable Rendezvous on Fedora Linux, I came to howl. Howl is essentially an implementation of the automic IP address allocation thing, an mDNSResponder implementation and an SDK for writing service discovery enabled applications.



Howl also provides simple sample applications, e.g. for announcing (mDNSPublish) and browsing (mDNSBrowse) services on the local network. Now if only all the applications were service discovery enabled. Then you could simply announce e.g. your SMTP server via mDNSPublish "default mail gateway" _smtp._tcp. 25, and any service-discovery-enabled mail program could simply browse for '_smtp._tcp.' when having to send an email, and thus no user intervention is required for configuring an SMTP server. This would be especially useful for wireless networks.



So, what would be extremely nice is more service-discovery-enabled software, and most importantly, service-discovery-enabled Linux distributions.

Currently, I'm testing ecto, a desktop blogging client for Mac OS X. This means that I don't have to use that web interface for writing new entries, but can instead use a nice client. But, well, it's still missing a good editor. So, as this is the very first time I use this program, let's see how it works...

Thanks to Christian Dablander, I got a sixth version of the Sober.C social engineering worm, which you can find here.

For those who know the famous Badger flash animation, there's a new, extended version of it, which can be found here. Hilarious!

(via kyrah.net)

Microsoft started a new FUD campaign against Linux. Really funny, as they don't really seem to know what they're talking about. But well, they have to do that, and fortunately, people usually realize that these 'independent studies done by 3rd parties' are actually sponsored by Microsoft, and done by a company that is owned by, uhm, Microsoft.

The article So far, so good explains how spammers try to "poison" or defeat bayesian filters, and why this cannot work (fortunately). This is a followup to this weblog entry.

From: Noah Poe                                                                                       

Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 15:58:49 -0600                                                                                      

To: a.konrad@aon.at                                                                                                        

Subject: canberra happen                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                           

aides bone emmanuel rumania persistent josephine pencil majesty bottom                                                     

anarch molecular cafe hepburn done ellipsoid monoceros chokeberry pungent decontrolled                                     

orphanage keel cessna lippincott drugstore onion inclement empire

WTF?! Is this anti-ECHELON keyword spamming?

As promised, here is a picture that I took during skiing:

Skiing is fun, and Gosau is definitely the place to be. Today I was skiing there for over 5 hours. The first few hours sucked extremely (never go skiing without a breakfast and having slept out totally and be sure to have totally warm feet), but after a hot soup and a drink everything was fine again. Unfortunately, the weather at Gosau wasn't that pretty, and so we had to ski through sometimes really thick fog, and had sun and blue sky for less than an hour. The snow was generally pretty nice (top-quality snow cannon snow ;-), except for a few icy slopes. As soon as I find time to copy the pictures from my digicam, I will post a picture of this really nice skiing trip.

The turn of the year doesn't mean anything to me, except that the year is now 2004 instead of 2003. So, enough for now, expect some published code later this day (guess what .

Oh, damn, I hate christmas, until I get all the present. And this year... wow. I really didn't expect that many great presents. The definitive highlights are the Tocotronic 10th Anniversary CD+DVD and the latest Die ?zte album. And of course, lots of money, which almost completely covers my costs for the journey to Berlin. But since giving is so much better than taking, here are the presents that I gave out this year:

• The DVD Hundstage ("dog days") for my mother
• The DVD Mitsubischi for my brother
• The book De Luca kocht for my father
• An elegant white vase for my grandmother
• ... (I can't tell the rest, that's just too personal)

Regarding Berlin: I will fly there with Richard, a good friend of mine from school days. This time we will swank, staying in a pretty nice hotel. For some reason, the 20C3 will be a new, interesting experience. A journey report will follow.

Sober.C (according to wastl from #mum it is called "saubaer.c") is the latest social-engineering-based worm that is currently floating around. It is funny to read the body content, not only because they are high quality (social-engineering-wise), but also because they are highly amusing. If you are interesting in the texts, you can find them here: 1, 2, 3, 4. I will post updates here should I get more of them.

Update: I got a new one: 5.

The dark side of the force is clearly dominating the world. This can be proved by using our goddess: while a search for "light side of the force" shows up only 2150 results, searching for "dark side of the force" returns about 15700 results. This means, the dark side of the force is about 7.3 times stronger than the light side.

I just found a wikipedia entry about the Yiddish language, and I have to say, I'm impressed about the similarities between German (especially the one used in Austria) and Yiddish. The mentioned page explains a few Yiddish words, which clearly show its germanic origin, like shlimazl (German: Schlamassel), kvetshn (German: quetschen) or Shnorrer (German: Schnorrer). I should really learn more about it, since it seems to show a lot about the origin of Austrian dialect and slang words.

This evening, our company is about to celebrate christmas. The last time, it was eating and drinking first and lots of drinking afterwards, until 3 am or so. Lots of fun, lots of alcohol. I already feel it, I'm going to be sooo wasted tomorrow. And then kinda celebrating christmas with my grandparents, that will be so extremely tiring... Anyway, expect some photos, as I will take my digicam with me, to document the celebration.