In the author's article about how to map the NULL pointer, there's this caveat:

Note that most modern systems actually specifically disallow mapping the NULL page, out of security concerns. To run the following example on a recent Linux machine at home, you'll need to run # echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr as root, first.

So under normal circumstances, even with a NULL dereference in the running kernel, this method would not allow you to gain root privileges.

My question is, what legitimate reason might there be for a system to allow applications to map the NULL pointer? Is there a class or role of machines where this might be expected to work?

In the summer of 2006, the Fort Wayne Police Department set up at busy intersections and pulled over the last car through every yellow light. The newspaper recently reported that they wrote approximately 40,000 red-light tickets that year -- 30,000 more than the average. Everyone who contested it in court had their fine reduced to $1. But of course many did not. The FWPD has never apologized, disciplined its officers, or returned the money.

http://www.gizmag.com/bullet-proof-polo-shirt/10187/

Uploading audio to your car while you're sitting at your desk.

Identifies, and then redacts the images that would support the claim. How convenient.

It's yet to be established that any of those killed were armed.

it seems strange to me that he should be able to tell at-a-glance what they lead to (unless they were patently advertising what they linked to, which strikes me as unlikely).

It doesn't seem all that unlikely. I've seen countless links that blatantly advertise that they're kiddie porn, especially on P2P networks. (Of course, who knows if they're actually kiddie porn, or some kind of honeypot.) Conversely, in fifteen years of downloading vast amounts of porn, I've only accidentally downloaded kiddie porn maybe three or four times. Purveyors of kiddie porn are either completely up front about what they're dealing in, or they have some really sophisticated and secretive networks... and I'm inclined to doubt the latter.

Don't you mean Hanukkah?

Also, DDT was undone by its low cost. Farmers were using tens or even hundreds of times the effective amount because it cost next to nothing. If used as directed, the environmental cost/benefit is even higher. I've read that some scientists are promoting its reintroduction to combat malaria in Africa.

Of course not. Why the hell would you ever think that?

Yep. You should be fucking grateful that they've allowed you to use their code in the first place, under any terms.

My ZVUE player crashed once, and I swear I saw a Linux console before the screen went blank. I want the firmware code!

a) Genuine democracy does not scale with current population levels. As someone else here said, the American Constitution was originally written for a population of 3 million, which is 1/100th of the population's current size.

I disagree with this. What doesn't scale is federalism. A more republican system would work much better. Local governments should tax at the level the Federal government currently does, and vice versa.

This brings up an interesting point. Seems there's a head-on collision between a mainstream culture that's more and more in tune with the vast amount of information available to them, and a judiciary culture that's more and more likely to lie to jurors, withhold crucial facts (like the right of nullification) and basically make a joke out of the entire judicial process.

"Men, on the other hand, rarely use anything but a map. If I changed a street sign outside my apartment, my male friends probably wouldn't be able to find the place anymore."

Maybe I'm an exception, but I don't think that's true at all. I navigate entirely by landmarks. I don't even know the names of half the streets I travel on regularly. Furthermore, my mental map of the city is framed by our light rail system, major bus lines, and bike throughfares, not by the major roads carrying automobile traffic.