Recently, I learned that at least one of my readers is dissatisfied with my current favourite “open source license”. For him and any others like him, I would like to propose a new one, and offer to “relicense” under it any of the VTronic items I have published on my site (strictly by explicit request, […]

There are innumerably many reasons for writing a computer program; but, to my knowledge, the publication of its source code is nearly always motivated by one of these three: I. Subordination: “Open Source.” Some of the earliest — and arguably, highest quality — computer programs with openly-published source code were developed inside conventionally-structured organizations, by […]

“The Harper.” by Vlas Mikhailovich Doroshevich (1864–1922). The Emperor Jin-La-O, may his memory be sacred to the whole braid-adorned world, was a wise and just Emperor. One day he summoned his entourage and said to them: – I would like to learn the name of the greatest villain in all of Beijing – in order […]

Lately, I found myself unable to resist the temptation to translate this very pertinent classic to English. If you, reader, know of a better translation, do not hesitate to write in. And so, here goes: “The Story of One Wetnurse.” by Vlas Mikhailovich Doroshevich (1864–1922). Emperor Jing-Li-O, nicknamed Hao-Tu-Li-Chi-San-He-Nun, which means Justice Itself, once woke […]

Recently, I received a tip that some Linux users saw rubbish in place of certain Unicode glyphs appearing in the FFA series (in particular, in Ch. 14.) If the following two rows of symbols do not appear recognizably-identical in your WWW browser: ← → ⇠ ⇢ ⌊ ⌋ … the following fix is likely to […]

Certain double-conversion UPS units by Liebert (in my case — a GXT4-2000RT120) appear to contain a boobytrap whereby off-the-shelf (needs two 12v/80mm) high-efficiency/quiet fans will not operate — the boot will abort with a Fan Out of Order error. The pill: install a 100 ohm wirewound resistor in parallel with the front fan connector (on […]

Lately, I found myself unable to resist the temptation to translate this very pertinent classic of science fiction to English. If you, reader, know of a better translation, do not hesitate to write in. Meanwhile, here goes: “The Star Diaries of Ijon Tichy: The Advantages of a Dragon.” Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006). Until now, I’ve said […]

In the spam trap today, I turned up this piece of “fan mail”: Good afternoon there, I became even more concerned about our future after reading your http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1299 page. Our government continues to use surveillance technologies to collect sensitive data and then there’s a real risk that this data can be leaked. Did you know […]

This article is a continuation of the dig into the key schedule of the Serpent cipher. For clarity, we will omit the routines already given in the previous article. Let’s visualize the Serpent key schedule as a graphic: ;; 256bit(key)+1(const) x 4224(132*32) matrix, last column for constant subterms (defvar *matrix* (make-array ‘(257 4224) :element-type ‘(mod […]

Linux. ( 1991 — 2018. ) No disrespect is intended for Stepan Mitrofanovich Gudimov (1913 – 1941), died heroically in aerial ramming maneuver… whose beautiful tomb I stole here. But IMHO a dead project of Linux’s stature deserves a tomb, even if only an imaginary and stolen one. Especially a stolen project…