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Karsten M. Self | 4 Oct 02:21

Unpacking MS Entourage database files (or proprietary data formats for fun and profit)

Some time ago I found myself, for reasons known to some but
provacatively deffered to disclosure at a later date, with a strong
hankering to access the contents of a Microsoft Entourage database file.
Microsoft Entourage is, as you might suspect, a Microsoft product for OS
X, roughly analagous to Microsoft Outlook, serving as a personal
information manager, with email, contacts, calendar, to-do lists, and
related functions.  It maintains all related data in a single binary
blob datatabse for which no specification or public documentation is
available.

This wasn't just any database, but one which had been recovered from a
failed hard drive and apparently somewhat internally corrupted..  First
attempts at recovery, through Entourage's own database recovery
procedure, not surprisingly, failed.

Googling for recovery tools showed little in the way of anything useful,
though several sources suggested using binary editors to view content.
Doing so showed that there were large identifiable text blocks within
the database, including content that was clearly RFC 2822 email content.

Running 'strings' against the database produced output in which the
email and other content was more clearly evident, along with a number of
frequently occuring four-byte codes, similar to the following:

     1     5886 DELE
     2     5381 MLRC
     3     3070 popM
     4     2560 MLID
     5     2529 mesg
     6     2020 MSrc
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Bob Bernstein | 3 Oct 05:14

[rs <at> bernstein.providence.ri.us: Re: Is this not the funniest documentation you ever read?]

...intended for the list, this went "privately" to Mr. Palmer
instead. <groan>

On Fri, Oct 03, 2008 at 08:39:07AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote:

> 611, actually.  We're upside down, not backwards.

For a rotating frame of reference, to say that it is "upside
down" is to say it is backwards.

--

-- 
Bob Bernstein
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Ruben Safir | 2 Oct 06:16

[ruben <at> mrbrklyn.com: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Is this not the funniest documentation you ever read?]


http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf.html#Writing-Autoconf-Input

Next: Autoconf Language, Up: Writing Autoconf Input
3.1.1 A Shell Script Compiler

Just as for any other computer language, in order to properly program
configure.ac in Autoconf you must understand what problem the language
tries to address and how it does so.

The problem Autoconf addresses is that the world is a mess. After
all,....

Ruben

--

-- 
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software

So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world  - RI Safir 1998

http://fairuse.nylxs.com  DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002

"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"

"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we
need the ability to participate in our own society."

"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be damned.<
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Gerald Oskoboiny | 11 Sep 04:40

email address obfuscation considered harmful

One thing I really liked about this list when I joined was its
policy on email address munging:

    This list does not munge addresses. If you don't like that, don't
    post. Real elitists make spammers disappear for everyone; they
    don't hide from spammers. People who ask their addresses to be
    removed from the list archives will be publicly mocked. At
    Management's sole discretion, addresses of persons asking to be
    removed from the list archives may also be added to popular,
    frequently crawled pages on this or other sites.
    -- http://web.archive.org/web/20030811175517/http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-elitists

I'm disappointed to see that not only has my favorite sentence
("Real elitists...") been removed from the current listinfo page,
but the archives now munge addresses to "gerald at impressive.net"

When did it become time to start hiding from spammers?

I just posted an entry on W3C's systems blog about the (lack of)
obfuscation in our mailing list archives, feedback welcome:
http://www.w3.org/blog/systeam/2008/09/11/email_address_obfuscation
(here or there, or both)

--

-- 
Gerald Oskoboiny <gerald <at> impressive.net>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/
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Karsten M. Self | 2 Aug 00:41

RIP Ed Foster

We've lost a few members of what I consider to the the home team in
recent weeks.  First Joe Barr, now InfoWorld Gripe Line columnist and
blogger, Ed Foster.

Ed looked at one of the more overlooked aspects of technology, and one I
think FSF Free Software tends to support very well:  the end-user, and
very often the average Joe and Jane, the experience had in using
software and technology, and much more often than should be the case,
the deliberate frustrations inflicted by vendors.  Ed looked not only at
such mundane and common gripes as printer ink gouging and poorly-written
applications, but beyond the interface to the broader environment, and
very often the legal environment, including crusuades against UCITA (a
rewriting of the Uniform Trade Act governing most business and purchase
transactions), Net Neutrality, and EULA practices.

When InfoWorld's early online forray, InfoWorld Electric, found that its
existing, proprietary, forums software was no longer up to the task
(Y2K issues were cited), and the publication disasterously adopted yet
another proprietary solution, to overwhelming criticism of both readers
and staff, Ed set up his own Gripe Line blog using software I'd
suggested for InfoWorld itself:  the Scoop engine, licensed under the
GPL, originally developed for Kuro5hin.org.

Ed's blogs remain online at:

    http://www.gripe2ed.com/

Ed apparently thought Free Software might be the way to go as well.  I'd
just read the announcement of his passing, and having already thought
this was a milestone worth mention on l-e, noted that Ed's family has
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Teh Entar-Nick | 31 Jul 16:53

Brett Glass speaks out against Net Neutrality

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/29/AR2008072902077.html
> Lariat, a small provider of wireless broadband service in Laramie,
> Wyo., blocks any use of direct file sharing -- called peer-to-peer --
> because such traffic overwhelms the network, the company said.
> 
> "If we didn't do this, we'd go out of business," said Brett Glass,
> Lariat's owner. 

--

-- 
"Man, if everything were object-oriented then rsync         Nick Moffitt
could do this already. Of course, if everything were       nick <at> zork.net
object-oriented I'd have a bushy moustache and be
wearing flares, which would suck." -- Sean Neakums
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Don Marti | 27 Jul 23:47

One more thing on DRM...

From the political news files:
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/26/michael-savage-lawsuit-ag_n_115103.html

  "In her ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan
  Illston said people who listen to a public broadcast
  are entitled to use excerpts for purposes of comment
  and criticism."

Of course, if the comment and criticism had used a
circumvented copy of a DRM-restricted work, no such
exception applies.

Anyone got an example of a straight-up _political
speaker_ who's using a DRM-restricted format, and
a comment on or criticism of that speaker? 

--

-- 
Don Marti                                               +1 415-734-7913 mobile
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
dmarti <at> zgp.org         Linux device driver unconference: http://freedomhec.org/
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Aaron Porter | 27 Jul 22:09

[rms <at> gnu.org: Re: Defective By Design]

----- Forwarded message from Richard M Stallman <rms <at> gnu.org> -----

From: Richard M Stallman <rms <at> gnu.org>
CC: linux-elitists <at> zgp.org
Subject: Re: [linux-elitists] Defective By Design
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 13:14:51 -0400

	    Is it just me, or is it the FSF that seems to have gone defective?

Maybe neither.  I think you and some others have misunderstood and
misjudged our protest.

    Their latest anti-iPhone campaign[1] crosses some lines I'm not too pleased
    with. They're urging people to setup a meatspace denial of service attack
    against the "Genius Bars" in Apple Stores world wide

That's not what we are doing.  We have asked people to go to Apple
stores and show Apple's staff their opposition to Apple's DRM.
Describing this with terms such as "denial of service" and
"disruption" is untrue.

Calling it an "attack" is an exaggeration.  When people go one by one
to a store and tell the staff what they think, that's not an attack.
When Apple implements DRM, when Apple deactivates unlocked iPhones,
that's an attack.

"Voting with your feet" means individually rejecting DRM.  Of course
you should do that, but acting collectively is stronger than acting
individually.  The movie companies organize, the record companies
organize, and a large company such as Apple is lots of people who are
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Aaron Porter | 26 Jul 22:28

Defective By Design


	Is it just me, or is it the FSF that seems to have gone defective?
Their latest anti-iPhone campaign[1] crosses some lines I'm not too pleased
with. They're urging people to setup a meatspace denial of service attack
against the "Genius Bars" in Apple Stores world wide in an effort to
educate Apple about it's product is "restricting your freedoms".
	They previously posted "5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G"[2], a brief
but quite valid list of reasons users might want to avoid the iPhone
(curiously omitting the lack of any support for non-iTunes activation,
use, etc). Their last reason for avoiding the device -- "iPhone is not the
only option." seems to negate the militant tactics they're adopting now.
	I've been a longtime supporter of the FSF (up to but not including
prefixing Linux with GNU), contributing my own time and money as well as
pushing through software "purchases" by my employers. I'm not sure I want
to be associated with the group after this.
	Sure the iPhone is sexy, but there has been sexy hardware for
decades that lacked free software support. I have and continue to "vote
with my feet" -- making purchasing decisions for myself and my employers
based on our ability to use products in the way we desire. I have and will
continue to try to educate others and convince them to do the same. I
don't think I'll every be convinced that deliberately disrupting a legal
business practice and denying a valid service to users who have made
different ethical choices than my own will have a positive result in
freeing anything.

[1] http://www.defectivebydesign.org/apple-challenge
[2] http://defectivebydesign.org/5-reasons-to-avoid-iphone-3g
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Andrew Fife | 24 Jul 21:58

Installfest for Schools

Hi Folks:

I'm very pleased to announce that Untangle & ACCRC have teamed up with LinuxWorld (Aug 5-7) for our second
Installfest for Schools.  The first ACCRC/Untangle Installfest for Schools in March refurbished 350
Ubuntu computers for schools[1].  This time we've gotten a large booth on the expo floor and will have
workstations setup for volunteers to refurbish recycled computers with Ubuntu and GnewSense.  We
particularly need help with the following:

1)Installing Ubuntu and/or gNewSense  
2)Hacking older hardware and identifying good/bad components

You can signup for a work station here:

http://www.untangle.com/installfest

Also, if you know of a school in need of computers that’s willing to try GNU/Linux please nominate them here:

http://www.untangle.com/index.php?option=com_collect&task=installfestNominate&Itemid=1426

And if you have an older computer that you want to donate or recycle, please bring it to LinuxWorld.  ACCRC
will have a collection booth setup and can provide tax deductable receipts.  PIII and newer systems will be
refurbished with Ubuntu for schools.  Older systems will be recycled properly by the ACCRC.

Lastly, we are always looking for help getting the word out.  If you want to give the event some love on your
blog, Digg, StumbleUpon, Slashdot, or some crazy forum please link to the main installfest page, which is http://www.untangle.com/installfest

Thanks so much for your help!

-Andrew
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Don Marti | 24 Jul 18:38

Applications and the infamous DNS vulnerability

On a properly set up home or office network, it should
be difficult to poison the nameserver completely
from the outside -- for a long time it's been best
practice to put your public DNS on a separate machine.

Of course an attacker can easily trick an application
on the inside into doing a bunch of DNS queries --
the simplest example is that a user could visit a
malicious web page with a bunch of images.

Should applications that handle untrusted data
be keeping track of the number of times they get
NXDOMAIN for subdomains of one domain -- some kind
of wrapper around getaddrinfo -- then refusing to
query again if there are so many that it looks like
an attack?  Maybe with a "I'm not looking up another
randomcrap.example.com domain for you" dialog, or
maybe just stop processing the offending web page or
whatever other data source is causing the queries?

--

-- 
Don Marti                                               +1 415-734-7913 mobile
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
dmarti <at> zgp.org         Linux device driver unconference: http://freedomhec.org/
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Gmane