I have a new blog now. It is located at http://blog.movnet.org/.

You've probably already read a gazillion advisories about this by now well-known vulnerability. It's limited to Debian-derived OS'es, and only affects keys generated after June 2006, I think. Don't quote me on anything though.

A co-worker has read up on the issue a bit, and apparently the vulnerability effectively limits the key space to about 32k (PID was used, iirc). This means that there are 32k "master" key pairs. A rather serious side effect of this is that the private key can be found with a simple brute force search. Therefore, all private AND public keys must be purged, with fire. Personally, I'm going to take off and nuke my keys from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

I read a surprisingly interesting article on elevators the other day. It was centered around the story of Nicholas White, who got stuck in an elevator for 41 hours without food or water. Highly recommended piece for some random reading.

Hi folks! I'm going to start writing this blog again soon. Stay tuned for more info.

So hi. I'm back at uni now, studying for an exam in electromagnetism. It's not as thrilling as it sounds, trust me. Summer was great though. Well, at least experience-wise. The weather kinda blew, but that's just bad karma, nothing you can do about it.

So I guess the two most notable events this summer were the family trip to Finland, and my one-week trip with my girlfriend Rebecca on the west coast.

Finland was great. It was really fun to meet all the relatives there. We also spent a few days in the country side at my aunt's summer house. It was really nice, as it's right by a lake. There we engaged in some Finnish traditions, like sauna. It was really sweet.

Right after Finland, I headed out on a week's vacation with Rebecca. We started out with a one-day draisine trip in the country side. It was pretty cool, actually. It's a special feeling, being on rails. (pun intended) After that, we headed south and passed through Strömstad and Råssö, and had an amazing dinner on the island of Smögen. Next day we briefly checked Marstrand out, before heading down to Göteborg (Gothenburg). There we had a lovely dinner at a friend of mine. The next day was dedicated to exploring Göteborg, and we visited the art museum Göteborgs konstmuseum, saw Avenyn and the botanical gardens. The remaining days were dedicated to the coast south of Göteborg, where we visited towns like Varberg, Falkenberg and Halmstad. All in all, it was an amazing vacation with an amazing girlfriend.

So as I was saying, I'm back at uni, studying (i.e. telling my self I'm on a break and browsing the web instead). Now I REALLY have to get started.

I've been at Dreamhack for three days now, and I haven't really had time to write anything here. I'm in the tech team, and we have tons of work to do. I'm just saying hi, and hopefully I'll have time to write more later. Meanwhile, check out the webcams here.

Phew. I just got back from our three hour corridor cleaning session. We had decided that we had way too much stuff, so we took out everything from the cupboards and then chose the eight best plates, knives, forks, etc. Then we dishwashed everything we were going to keep, and at the same time cleaned the entire kitchen. Now it's cleaner than I've ever seen it (and I've lived here for three and half years), and it's not over-bloated with 20 plates, 40 knives, 50 forks, 15 pots, etc, for 8 people.

The only downside, for the moment, is that we have a HUGE pile of garbage outside the kitchen. We need to keep it there until the others have verified that we're not throwing away any of their stuff. Once we have all that crap out, man, is it going to feel good. Coming back to a clean kitchen after the summer feels great. Also, it's good that we cleaned it now, because the newcomers will think that it's always been this clean.

So what else is new? Oh, I had my first exam today. Software testing. I had barely studied for it, but it was quite easy. Then again, the teacher had said that we shouldn't worry about the exam, so I didn't :P Next I have the component-based software exam. I think it's going to be a bit trickier, but still nothing major.

I'm also excited because in about one and a half weeks, we're going to start building Dreamhack Summer 2007. A week ago I was in Jönköping with the networking team (the one I'm on) over the weekend. It was a lot of fun. We worked with the machines we're going to have at Dreamhack. I set up the DNS and DHCP servers, while others were busy working with access points, RAID arrays and mega-fat Cisco routers (7600 series). I especially liked the 40GbE (4*10) cards for the Cisco routers. Massive amounts of bandwidth. When we didn't work we were barbecuing. It was really fun.

Anyway, that recap should cover most stuff. See ya'll later, aligator.

Ok, now I have comment functionality :) Any comments?

Today it's 1.4166666666 years (1+5/12) since I met my girlfriend. Actually, we met 4 months earlier when she moved into my corridor, but we've been a couple for one year and five months. I just want to say that I love her. She's a wonderful person, and I couldn't imagine my life without her.

Yesterday Richard M. Stallman (RMS) paid our university a visit and gave a lecture about free software. He spoke a lot about copyright law, and how broken it is. I must say, I was expecting him to be overzealous, but instead I think he was sort of realistic. I found myself agreeing with a lot of his opinions.

He had a lot of good examples and stories to throw at potential dissidents. One of the better ones was related to copyright (of course). He claimed that Shakespeare's works were influenced by stories that had been written a few decades prior to Shakespeare's. Had we had copyright law then as we know it now, then Shakespeare's works would never have been published, and we wouldn't have read them. The same scenario applies today, when people are accused of copyright infringement. The original author could claim that he or she doesn't want any "cheap knockoffs" of his or her work. It's just that since any influenced works are never published, we will never know if they're really just "cheap knockoffs" or masterful works of art, merely using the same basic story as another work.

After the lecture he answered some questions from the audience. I asked him if he encouraged people to break the law if it favored freedom as he had defined it. He replied that he did indeed encourage people to do this. We must constantly reflect over the laws we have and think about whether they actually make sense or not. If a law does not serve the people, then it's not a good law. Laws are no absolute truths.

After the lecture I asked him if he thought voting for a certain party in the US presidential election could make things better, to which he replied that he had mostly given up hope on the US. That made me a bit disillusioned. I know that the situation is very bad, but I wasn't expecting RMS, of all people, to give up. I guess the US gave up on him, so he's giving up on the US. Or something.

The computer society at the university, Lysator, videotaped the lecture, so when I find a link to the video I'll post it here.