Shallow and Pedantic
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Shallow and Pedantic
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Shallow and Pedantic

A person/tech/code blog of a coder/techie/person. Like calculus in a kiddie pool, the author of this blog is known to be quite shallow and pedantic.

Really liking the whole Python thing

 published on

I’ve converted my Antigibberish script1 (converts “broken hebrew” into proper hebrew, useful for sent-offline ICQ messages) to Python… it’s quite a nice language, and the interpreter is FAST! I’m really torn between it and Ruby :(

  1. Used to have a copy of antigibberish.py, but it’s been lost in the mists of time. It used to do the equivalent of this:

    iconv -f utf-8 -t iso8859-1 | iconv -f iso8859-8 -t utf-8 ↩︎

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 Software, Python

Here's hoping

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def factor(grade, params = {})
  return 100 if params.empty? # Optimistic, eh?

  case params[:type]
  when :pass
    return 55
  when :fail
    return 54
  when :root
    params[:gamma] = 0.5
  end

  grade = grade.to_f

  return params[:proc].call(grade) if params[:proc]

  grade *= params[:coefficient] if params[:coefficient]

  if params[:gamma]
    grade /= 100
    grade **= params[:gamma]
    grade *= 100
  end

  if params[:offset]
    grade += params[:offset]
  end

  return grade if params[:idnoclip]
  [ grade, 100 ].min
end
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 Technion

Internet in Haifa Bay Central

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In the Haifa Bay Central bus station (מרכזית המפרץ), it’s possible to get an internet connection. HTTPS works automatically, and setting the proxy to proxy.technion.ac.il:8080 works for HTTP. I was unsuccessful in using corkscrew to get SSH connections to tunnel over it as well, but perhaps there is still a way.

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 Networking

Why Vista worries me

 published on

I’ve heard the latest Security Now, regarding the debate between Dave Marsh and Peter Guttman on DRM in Windows Vista. While a few good points were made, the major one - in my opinion - was not.

DRM, in a practical sense, is deeply flawed: The idea is to give you your media - say, a WMA piece of music - and a program to play it with - say, Windows Media Player - but encrypt the media. Now, naturally, Media Player will need the decryption key for the media, and the idea is that Media Player will verify that you are allowed to listen to the song, and only then decrypt it - as it is played.

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 Software, Security