How to get a CRC32 in Hex in Python

Before I did this:

import zlib

def crc32(filename):
    return "%08x" %  zlib.crc32(file(filename, 'r').read())

But in python2.3 that gives a warning:

FutureWarning: %u/%o/%x/%X of negative int will return a signed string in Python 2.4 and up

So I changed it to:

import zlib, binascii, struct

def crc32(filename):
    bin = struct.pack('!l', zlib.crc32(file(filename, 'r').read()))
    return binascii.hexlify(bin)

I tested these two on a few thousand files and they seem to both have the exact same results.

I wants IT!

The Treo 600 came out this week. I want it even tho it has these draw backs:

• Internet is not always on - I don’t want silly dialup like support. I want always on broadband. With a static ip. I don’t care if you have to use IPv6 addresses either.

• While on the internet calls are diverted to voicemail - this is soooo 90’s :)

• No built in Bluetooth - this is one device that could really use it.

Also it looks like someone lost me $300 by not sending in a rebate from on time. :(

More Ideas for a Bluetooth Phone (like the Treo 600)

An idea I had while walking out of the office, “I wish my IM’s would get redirected to me right after I walk out”. So with Bluetooth you could have your phone say hello to the computer you are sitting at and say, “sign on to IM agent”, and then if the phone can’t talk to the computer for 1 minute, it signs on to the IM agent and kicks off the other computer.

Another idea is having the phone store your password/ssh/gpg keyring, and maybe even do the crypto ops on the phone via bluetooth.

Will my vote count for anything?

After reading this interview with Bev Harris about her research into Black box voting, I decided to call my local registare of voters, and asked them what voting machine they use, if they had any plans to replace them, and if they knew about the Diebold controversy. They answered: AVC Advantage (which I plan to read a bit more about), no plans to replace them, and they did now about the Diebold mess.

BigChampagne

Wow. These guys are claiming they are gathering stats on most p2p user. What’s intresting is they must have reverse engineered the kazaa stuff long before the open source community did. It also would seem that they are probably running Kazaa Supernodes in order to get this info, thus helping Kazaa users download stuff that the RIAA would rather they not. I bet they don’t tell their customers that.

I don’t think a company like this could exists if something like Overnet became more common place.