Via diggdot.us, Ubuntu Breezy has a confirmed and critical bug that allows the first user registered password to be found by any user by reading the file /var/log/installer/cdebconf/questions.dat, which is world-readable. The problem does not affect the Dapper version.

This means admin’s running Breezy will have some headaches the next couple of weeks. If you can upload a php/perl/etc file to the server you can read the password out of var/logs with fopen() and that means you’re done in many scenarios. Word of advise: don’t do something stupid. If you like security or even if you don’t, a note on your police file won’t help your curriculum.

I’ve been using Ubuntu on my laptop for some time now and must say it never let me down. The guys did a great job. It’s a good install-and-go/Just Works distro and that’s what I need right now. Flawless package management, on-the-fly Gnome desktop, OpenOffice, Flash, Evolution 2.5.x, etc.. I don’t see this bug affecting the popularity of Ubuntu but then again we all now that critical servers are not their market.

References: * https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/34606

* Follow thread on ubuntuforums.org

Note to self: Subtract 4 days and you get the day Google acquired Writely. As Russell Beattie pointed out, we’ve got ourselves another winner in the Web 2.0 Acquisition Lottery..

My girlfriend just accidently removed some files from her ReiserFS home directory using “rm -rf ./path/to/some/dir *”. Notice the space between dir and *? She didn’t. Oh well, time to recover that shit back.

Once you realize that you’ve lost data, don’t do anything else on that partition - you may cause that data to be overwritten by new data.

0. Unmount the partition from where to recover deleted files:

     umount /home

1. Create partition copy:

      dd if=/dev/hda7 conv=noerror > /hda7.img

2. Set up device containing copy of partition (created in 1.)

      losetup /dev/loop/0 /hda7.img

3. Rebuild FS tree, performing a thorough partition scan and logging to /recovery.log file:

reiserfsck --rebuild-tree -S -l /recovery.log /dev/loop/0

(4. Check written log file)

      (less /recovery.log)

5. Create directory for mounting recovered partition:

      mkdir /recovery

6. Mount recovered partition in directory created in 5.

      mount /dev/loop/0 /recovery

7. Access recovered partition’s lost+found directory and look for files:

      cd /recovery/lost+found

8. If not there (7.), then look for in original directory:

      cd /recovery/

9. Remount /home partition:

      mount /home

10. Copy recovered files from 7./8. to /home/

      cp -r /recovery /home

11. Unmount recovered partition

     umount /recovery

12. Detach recovered partition device

     losetup -d /dev/loop/0

References: * ReiserFS undelete/data recovery @ antrix.net

A recursive item I search on the web for is Cascading Style Sheet, also known as CSS. I guess most of the information on the subject can easily be found on the net and because of
that I haven’t acquired any reference book yet. But I should, because there’s more to know than it seems.

Take CSS positioning (position:) for example, what does absolute, relative or
static positioning really mean? Or what’s the difference between using em, px ou % as an unit? What’s a container? Div, span, id, class? Well.. you get the point..

On my wishlist about this topic I have the book “The Zen of CSS Design : Visual Enlightenment for the Web (Voices That Matter)” but there’s also one by O’Reilly called “Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition” that seems pretty good.

There’s certainly more than one good reference out there on the Web about CSS but surely not too many in Portuguese, as this Brazilian site called maujor.com. I totally recommend it as I’ve found priceless information there.

Although most of the time ommited, CSS is definitely part of the second phase of architecture and application development for the World Wide Web now beginning to be known as the Web 2.0 phenomena and it certainly plays an important role, we all agree on that.

There is so much to be said about the physicist Dr. Richard Feynman that I’m even afraid of writing anything. Quoting Wikipedia:

Renowned American physicist, he is also author of books that became world-famous like “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”, “What Do You Care What Other People Think?“, etc.., and also considered the father of nanotechnology. The first mention of some of the concepts in nanotechnology, not yet under that name, were made in one of his talks December 29, 1959, titled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, also very famous.

Between some of the distinguishing facts of Dr. Feynman, we know he was an inspiring lecturer, an amateur musician and that he helped in the development of the atomic bomb. Feynman said he was persuaded to join this effort to help make sure that Nazi Germany did not build them first.

He was one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics. Apart from pure physics, Dr. Feynman also is credited with the revolutionary concept and early exploration of quantum computing.

Feynman received a bachelor’s degree from the MIT in 1939 and obtained a perfect score on the entrance exams to Princeton University in mathematics and physics and received a Ph.D. from the same university in 1942.

At school he is said to be bright, but his measured IQ was merely above average at 124, according to
Wikipedia. The “Feynman Problem Solving Algorithm“, as facetiously observed by a colleague, was:

1. write down the problem;
2. think very hard;
3. write down the answer.

And much much more to be said… a fascinating personality indeed..

• Richard Feynman @ Wikipedia
• del.icio.us tag feynman
• Feynman stories, this one is funny :)

Lunch – Onion tortilha
Dinner -
Spaghetti with Soy Bolognese sauce

Three words about the Soy
Bolognese: it was great! It could fool anyone that didn’t know it was
soy.