More Zonkyness

Author: Mike Meredith

  • What Is A Zonky?

    Apparently one of the most popular search terms hitting my Blog is “what is a zonky”. I don’t think I actually say anywhere, so as a service to those who accidentally end up here looking for information on what one is, here is the explanation …

    A zonkey is a cross between a zebra and a donkey. More information on that can be found on the wonderful Wikipedia. Those who are looking closely will notice I haven’t answered the question properly. Given the syntax of the search, I think I’m seeing people who mistakenly think that “zonkey” is the same as “zonky”.

    Just for completeness, “zonky” itself means odd or weird, or a person in a “zonked” (high on drugs or exhausted) state.

  • No More Drupal, Hello WordPress

    Well it was fun playing with Drupal for a while (looks to be about 2 years), but I was not really using it to the full extent. In fact all I was doing was writing a blog, which something like WordPress can do perfectly well. And it was time I had another look at WordPress given I now have something that allows me to publish entries from my iPhone.

    All of the old posts have been kept, but unfortunately the URLs are not the same so old links (or realistically links from search results) will no longer work. Something I personally hate.

  • Spore: Evolutionary Propaganda?

    First I laughed, and then I thought “well good” when I heard that some Creationalists are complaining about a game that supposedly pushes the theory of evolution down kids throats. See http://antispore.com (don’t send abuse – being brainwashed and dumb doesn’t mean you deserve abuse).

    Given that Spore has a human pushing the buttons to control the “evolution” of creatures in Spores, it seems somewhat imaginative to claim that it represents evolution. But perhaps it is close enough after all a simulation of “proper” evolution would be a little hard to call a game and would probably be so slow as to be pretty boring to watch.

    Even if it does work as propaganda for the theory of evolution, it is pushing a theory that is accepted by every serious biological scientist out there. Creationlists like to claim that evolution is just a theory (and God’s creation is fact because it was written down in the Bible), but whilst the theory of evolution has not been proved, it does fit the available facts.

    In fact evolution cannot be proved … scientific theories are never proved; merely rejected when they cannot predict observations. Currently evolution is a validated theory.

    Evolution has lasted for almost 150 years which is an astonishingly long time for a scientific theory to last. It has of course changed in that time through minor improvements, but nobody has discovered something and gone “Oh dear! This knocks evolution on the head; time for something else.”. If you think of the changes in our understanding of the biological world since 1859, the fact that evolution is still accepted (by scientists) is quite remarkable.

    If you think evolution is wrong, you don’t understand it. Or worse you won’t accept clear facts because they conflict with your view of the world.

  • Max Mosley Is Innocent

    Or something like that.

    To be more precise he has won his case against the “News of the World” for invasion of privacy.

    The interesting thing about this decision despite the fact that it is not a landmark decision (previous court cases claiming invasion of privacy have been won in the UK), is that the complaints of journalists about it. They claim that the defacto “privacy law” that this is pointing to will undermine serious investigative journalism.

    It may do.

    But the media industry has long known that the actions of the muckrakers and pornographers of the gutter press is hugely unpopular with the thinking public. They have long had means of controlling themselves through an industry body, and have failed to control the seamier side of so-called journalism. State control of news media is abhorrent, but a lack of effective self-regulation will lead to that.

    Of course the public has to take some of the blame here too. We need to stop buying newspapers whose principle content involves unwarranted invasions of privacy. Whilst many (including myself) don’t think much of Max Mosley’s actions in his private life, it should remain his personal business unless he is up to something that is illegal or has a significant impact on his public work.

    Boycott the gutter press!

  • iPhone: Changing The Root Password

    I have just changed the root password on my iPhone from the default (really dumb of Apple to give every iPhone the same root password; it would not be much work to set the default root password from the IMEI or something). Before doing so I googled for appropriate instructions.

    Nothing wrong with the technical side of the instructions out there, but none I read made a point of what I would consider basic safety for dealing with changing the root password on a Unix machine. Keep a session open in case things go wrong!

    My own instructions for doing the change went along the lines of :-

    1. Open two terminals
    2. Create a new password hash with openssl passwd -crypt -salt "XX" "xyzzy" (obviously change the salt (“XX”) to two characters of your choice, and pick a better password than “xyzzy”!). Keep the output stashed somewhere safe.
    3. In both terminals ssh to the iPhone (ssh root@iphone).
    4. Copy the file /etc/master.passwd to a safe copy /etc/master.passwd.original
    5. Edit /etc/master.passwd and put the stashed has into the second field of root’s entry.
    6. Now exit from the ssh session in one window and try to reconnect with the new password.

    If things have gone wrong you will have an open session available to fix things (cp /etc/master.passwd.original /etc/master.passwd would be worth trying) whereas without you are kind of stuck.