Cryptography isn’t available by default on python. One needs to install the PyCrypto toolkit to make it work. Looks something like this:

from Crypto.Cipher import AES   
import base64   
  
key = "x0Dx0Fx07x0Fx0Cx0Fx08x0Fx06x0Fx09x0Fx06x0Fx03x0Fx0Fx06x0Fx0Fx0Fx0Fx0Fx0Fx06x0Fx09x0Fx06x0Fx03x0F"   
objAes=AES.new(key, AES.MODE_ECB)   
plaintext='This is sparta!!'   
#looks nicer with base64   
enc = objAes.encrypt(plaintext)   
print "Encrypted: " + base64.b64encode(enc)   
print "Decrypted: " + objAes.decrypt(enc)   

On a tech forum I visit often, we were discussing the various ways to
power down a computer when power goes out (apart from the boring way
of making your UPS automatically doing it for you). Now that I think
about it, I’m really obsessed with shutting computers down. I had an
idea long ago which was quite stupid but I’m gonna note it down anyway
so that I can laugh about it later. Also, I want to ensure that
Shampoo doesn’t patent it.

#!/bin/bash  
#Lame attempt at automated shutdown during power outages  
#Author: Ritesh Sinha  
#Email: riteshkumarsinha # GMAIL.com  
#http://ritesh.posterous.com  
#License: WTFPL http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/COPYING  
#Checks for network connectivity, if none, wait for ten minutes then shutdown  
#TODO: Add email notification (email sent at next boot, requires MTA reconfiguration)  
#NOTETOSELF: Use gmail as smarthost?  
#TODO: Figure out a better way to pull this off  
  
ETHTOOL=/usr/sbin/ethtool  
IF=/dev/eth0  
GREP=/bin/grep  
AWK=/usr/bin/awk  
LOG=/var/log/outages  
SDOWN=/sbin/poweroff  
function checklink()  
{  
if [ "$($ETHTOOL eth0 | $GREP Link | $AWK {'print $3'})" == 'yes' ]  
then  
return 0   
else  
return 1  
fi  
}  
  
# call checklink  
echo "Checking if link is up"  
checklink  
if [ $? -eq 0 ]  
then  
echo "Link is up, all good"  
else  
echo "Link seems to be down"  
echo "Waiting for ten minutes before checking again"  
#Will put longer sleep after testing  
sleep 600  
checklink  
if [ $? -gt 0 ]  
then  
echo "Link is still down"  
echo "Shutting down"  
echo "SHUTDOWN:$(date)" >> $LOG  
$SDOWN  
fi  
fi  
  

Bugs? Gosh, I hope not!

Chances are we’ll each be lost to time. 100 billion people have been
born before us. Most of them no longer exist as individuals in our
memories. No names. Faces only reflected in our own and not in any way
that really matters.

But not us. We might be remembered forever. All our Twitter
updates, our email, our Vimeo movies, our Xbox Live profiles, our
wormy FourSquare maps. They won’t be important. Not to most people,
anyway. But they’ll be there if the sysadmins take care of us, if the
corporations and machines to whom we’ve entrusted our records do not
fail or are not destroyed.

Backtrack 4 was released today. I had just completed downloading the
beta version only yesterday and finished installing it today. Since
BT4 has now moved to Ubuntu, I’d assumed that upgrading it to the
final would be easy as apt-get pie. I did and pretty much hosed KDE. A
little research showed that KDE is now in a different path (/opt/kde3)
than it was before (/usr/kde3).

The quickest hack to fix this is to add /usr/kde3 to the PATH line in
your .bashrc . This still doesn’t start KDE when you type startx
however. I resorted to another (sigh) hack to make this run as I badly
needed BT4 for work. echo “exec startkde” > ~/.xinitrc fixes that
issue.
This is cheap hackery. I’m sure there are better ways to fix this.

Arora is a lightweight cross-platform web browser. It’s free (as in free speech and free beer). Arora runs on Linux, embedded Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Windows, Haiku, and any other platforms supported by the Qt toolkit.

Arora uses the QtWebKit port of the fully standards-compliant WebKit layout engine. It features fast rendering, powerful JavaScript engine and supports Netscape plugins.

Apart from the must-have features such as bookmarks, history and tabbed browsing Arora boasts:

Patrick Stewart got used to being called ’sir’ playing Captain Jean Luc Picard during seven seasons of Star Trek The Next Generation and four feature films. But now it appears he will be being called ’sir’ in real life as news out of the UK reports the actor will be knighted by the Queen.

via trekmovie.com

Finally! Moustache looks weird though.

You are in a game show with nineteen other players. You don’t know the other players, you can’t see them, and you can’t communicate with them. The game you are in is called ‘Greed!’, and is straightforward to explain. You are asked to write down a whole dollar amount in the range $1 - $1,000,000 on a piece of paper. You will be paid the amount you asked for if it is deemed to be ’non-greedy’. Whether your request is indeed ’non-greedy’ will be decided once all twenty request have been received by the host of the show. Your requested amount will be labeled ’non-greedy’ if no other player has asked for less, and at least one player has asked for more.

It’s 50oC and has a humidity of 100%, less than a hundred people have been inside and it’s so deadly that even with respirators and suits of ice you can only survive for 20 minutes before your body starts to fail. It’s the nearest thing to visiting another planet – it’s going deep inside our own.

via ironammonite.com

Brilliant account of a visit to the Giant Crystal Cave.

4. How is ECSA different from CEH?

CEH exposes the learner to various hacking tools and techniques, while ECSA exposes the learner to the analysis and interpretation of results obtained from using those tools and techniques.

via eccouncil.org

Wait a minute. So the CEH course gives you access to the tools but you need an ECSA to understand what the results of those tools are? HEAD EXPLODES