Many people designing XML formats whether for application-specific configuration files, website syndication formats or new markup languages have to face the problem of how to design their formats to be extensible and yet be resilient to changes due to changes to versions of the format. One thing I have noticed in talking to various teams at Microsoft and some of our customers is that many people think about extensibility of formats and confuse that for being the same as the versioning problem.
The Svchost.exe file is located in the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder. At startup, Svchost.exe checks the services part of the registry to construct a list of services that it must load. Multiple instances of Svchost.exe can run at the same time. Each Svchost.exe session can contain a grouping of services. Therefore, separate services can run, depending on how and where Svchost.exe is started. This grouping of services permits better control and easier debugging.
In today’s world, all nations are inextricably interconnected. The United States is the most powerful and influential nation in the world. Everyone everywhere will be affected by the upcoming US presidential election. What if the whole world could vote in this election?
it is a nice idea in principle. unfortunately it is too easy to diebold the vote.
I have been researching various programs for video conferencing. most solutions are based around SIP which does pose unreasonable demands on firewalls for now. maybe one day, when we have wrestled back the end-to-end principle. more specifically, when SIP proxies are widely available and are easy to install. in the meantime, here is a list: working
i’ll update the list as i investigate more applications. note that i only considered free solutions. there are quite a few subscription-based solutions, not sure about their firewall traversal abilities.
i have been using skype quite intensively recently, and it has been a boon for my long distance relationship. thanks niklas for writing skype, and fuck you RIAA for trying to get him arrested. btw. skype is now also available for linux.
David Pawson: XSLT Questions and Answers
Quite possibly the best XSL resource bar none. Ready-made recipes for tasty XML snacking. 2022-11-02: With 2 decades of hindsight, what a disaster XML technologies have been. Here’s a funny example where XSLT ownz literally.
I discovered a surprising attack surface hidden deep inside Java’s standard library: A custom JIT compiler processing untrusted XSLT programs, exposed to remote attackers during XML signature verification. This post discusses CVE-2022-34169, an integer truncation bug in this JIT compiler resulting in arbitrary code execution in many Java-based web applications and identity providers that support the SAML single-sign-on standard.
If standards conscious designers already follow conventions, then the stage is set. So I decided to look at forty designers’ sites to see what conventions were being used in common page elements like headers and banners, navigation, content and footers. Here’s what I found.
it makes a lot of sense to standardize on common container names like header, content, navigation. this allows to share CSS across sites and create a nice CSS skin repository. bergie, who pointed me to this, seems to agree. maybe OSCOM should set up a set of “recommended div elements” and start a CSS repository that uses them?
2006-10-15: nice. standardized css is something i have long worked for at OSCOM, somewhat in vain.
Should we do it? Well, that gets down to a question that we’ve never had to face on Earth before: the distinction between nature and life. On Earth there is no meaningful distinction between nature and life, even in the remotest, coldest deserts.
We see that distinction for the first time when we look beyond the Earth, when we look at the moon. There’s nature; there’s no life. When we look at Mars, we also see nature, probably no life. It’s different from the moon, and we lack the word that distinguishes between something that’s dead, and something that was never alive. The moon was never alive. Mars is dead. The question in my mind is – should we bring it back to life?
In a talk at the NASA Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop at the agency’s headquarters, Green presented simulations, models, and early thinking about how a Martian magnetic field might be re-constituted and the how the climate on Mars could then become more friendly for human exploration and perhaps communities.
It consisted of creating a “magnetic shield” to protect the planet from those high-energy solar particles. The shield structure would consist of a large dipole—a closed electric circuit powerful enough to generate an artificial magnetic field.
Simulations showed that a shield of this sort would leave Mars in the relatively protected magnetotail of the magnetic field created by the object. A potential result: an end to large scale stripping of the Martian atmosphere by the solar wind, and a significant change in climate.
“The solar system is ours, let’s take it. And that, of course, includes Mars. But for humans to be able to explore Mars, together with us doing science, we need a better environment.”
2024-04-25: Mars is a lot more challenging for life than I realized
There are 5 primary obstacles that life must overcome to survive on Mars: radiation, toxins, temperatures, atmosphere, and water. Water, and its lack of availability to lifeforms, would be the prevailing reason why nothing could grow on Mars. All liquid water on Mars has a water activity below 0.5. There are no known lifeforms that could survive in this water, as the high salt concentration would quickly suck the liquid out of cells. Unlike the organisms that can survive extreme radiation, toxins, temperature, and low pressure, there are no known adaptations that life on Earth has evolved to get around the water problem.
this is Nefertiti’s tomb. Tutankhamun has been sleeping on the couch in his mother-in-law’s living room.
2022-02-14:
More than 170 pharaohs ruled across 30 dynasties for more than 3 ka; Tutankhamun ruled for only 10 years, starting at age 8. The King’s accomplishments, many of them undertaken by one of his advisers, who succeeded Tutankhamun as pharaoh, amounted to reversing his father’s cultural reforms: he restored Thebes (now Luxor) as the capital of the New Kingdom and returned to polytheism after Akhenaten had promoted the worship of Aten above all other gods. (Born Tutankhaten, he changed his name to reflect his renewed worship of Amun-Ra.) Before the discovery of his tomb, he was rarely mentioned in histories of Egypt. Today, many more people can recount his biography than that of Neferkare, thought to have reigned the longest of any pharaoh, for between 64 and 94 years, starting when he was 6; or that of Khufu, who was buried in the Great Pyramid of Giza; or even that of Ramses II, who is regarded as the most powerful of all the ancient rulers of Egypt. More children have worshipped Tutankhamun during the past 100 years than ever did in his lifetime; whatever his authority in the ancient world, he now rules over the kingdom populated by dinosaurs and pirates, horses and astronauts.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 