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Piece of PIE
Modern ELF systems can randomize the address at which shared libraries are loaded. This is generally referred to as Address Space Layout Randomization, or ASLR. Shared libraries are always position independent, which means that they can be loaded at any address. Randomizing the load address makes it slightly harder for attackers of a running program…
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Non-free Services
As both of my faithful readers can see, my blog postings have dropped significantly. I’ve been posting my random little comments on Google+ instead. Which leads me to the following. There is a hard-core group of people who only use free software. I’m not quite that hard-core, but in practice I do use only free…
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Anonymous
There is no chance that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. That said, I found the movie Anonymous to be reasonably watchable, although I thought many of Vanessa Redgrave’s scenes as the older Queen Elizabeth were ridiculous. But since the movie claims (perhaps as a joke) to…
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Corporate Unions
In an ordinary employer-employee relationship with a large company, the employer has most of the power. When any individual employee seeks a higher wage, he or she has no leverage; for a large company to lose a single employee makes little difference. In the U.S., unions have been a way for employees to get more…
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Nuclear Irrationality
I was recently thinking about my college studies of nuclear warfare. At the time it seemed like a relevant topic, and I took two courses on it. Like everything, the more you look into it the more complex it gets. The depth of the thinking in nuclear warfare planning was both impressive and appalling. One…