just found some pretty exiting links...
http://www.enderunix.org/docs/en/sc-en.txt
and
http://asm.sourceforge.net/syscall.html
You don't need to know a whole lot of assembly language for these tutorials, though you definitely need to know some c or at least be able to understand some pretty basic c. As it turns out writting shellcode is actually fairly simple because you don't really need it to do anything tremendous. You just want to be able to bind to a port and give anyone that binds access to a shell. Writing low level networking code in c can be a little bit intimidating until you wrap your head around the idea of a system call populating a struct for you and which structs have which parts populated and why. I still get confused by the idea of a basic server in c. If I am doing anything serious I'll rely on python because I am much more comfortable with it, but its definitely interesting to see where it all came from. The basic networking functions are like ics when building electronic devices. Its hard to find good documentation on why they work the way they do, but its still very important to know what they do. The more familiar with a process you become the better suited you will be for reversing it. I am going to print out those pages above as they are the best references I've seen on the subject.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
I know nobody reads this but...
According to Rasmussen polls, "In November, 36.0% of American Adults identified themselves as Republicans; 34.7% considered themselves Democrats, and 29.3% were not affiliated with either major party." This means the country is roughly split in thirds. However there has not been a good third party that could pull any of the 29.3% and maybe a few votes from swing voters in the two major parties. It seems the time is ripe and yet we still have no good options. Nader has been discredited almost completely(which sucks because as a politically incorrect person I approve almost 100% of the way he's handled himself. Also I recently read that a common trait amongst the best hackers is political incorectness(my spell check doesn't believe that is a word and maybe its right, but its staying). Hacker is a term used in society to refer to evil computer villians that steal your credit card information, but amongst programmers it used to describe people that understand the entire picture when it comes to computer programming and often use creative and intelligent design to deal with a problem(the solution being known as a hack). Ralph Nader shares a lot of the traits of a brilliant hacker including social ineptitude. Its a damn shame he can never be taken seriously, when he has been the only potential candidate that has offered real solutions(hacks) to political problems. Funny how Democrats always run on Ralphs principals(though there record seldom reflects them)). So departing from my ultimate hope that one day Ralph Nader will right this country, which has proven completely unrealistic, what can the real liberals(not democrats) do to build a cohesive party out of this entire third of the country that remains completely unrepresented in every election. Do any of us share the same values?
I think we need an 10 year plan. Its not likely to happen in 2012, nor is it likely to happen in 2016, but maybe by 2020 we will able to affect political change with this growing mass of independent voters. Unfortunately the populous is not really capable of understanding complicated ideas. For example, most people have clearly had trouble managing their own finances. In desperate fiscal situations we've turned to organisations that have no vested interested in our financial freedom and we borrowed money at interest from these organisations. This is obviously an irrational thing to do because though it might help in a momentary bind it puts you in an even worse situation for your long term survival. Credit drives this countries economy and it has failed us, yet the goal of most political stimulus packages passed recently is to increase lending(the same anti-altruistic monetary practice that has sent America to the poor house). The problem is we are electing officials that cannot handle their own finances for positions which require tight budgeting. Go on craigslist and find me a business doing the same thing. In order to make important decisions, they want proof that your decisions have panned out previously(politically this principal is increasingly harder to measure due to our see-saw like political environment in this country... Who is responsible for what... and why? Who knows any more). The real dilemma is that both major parties seem equally at fault. We were drunkenly driven into a ditch and we handed the keys to an equally drunk passenger on this drunk bus full of drunk passengers and told them to get us out before the cops come and we all end up in serious trouble. Its become unbearable to watch.
For me to get on board, get off my ass and vote, this is what I want:
1. End free trade agreements with china and raise import tariffs to make it more attractive to manufacture goods in the country.
2. Require any business that wishes to operate in America to use at least 15% American workers if they employ workers in 5 or more countries 20% if they employ workers in 3 to 5 countries and anything less than 3 25% or more if they did not incorporate in America and 80% regardless if they are American based.
3. Lobby reform now! businesses may donate to the American political process, but that money will get filtered through a third party agency and distributed equally amongst all candidates that received the proper number of signatures and meet all other requirements of running for office. Additional money will be taken from any business that earns more than $1 billion dollars and operates in the United States to help fund the political process. No media organisations will be permitted to interview candidates as they will give more attention to those they favour to win(this will require making an amendment to the constitution that says business organizations cannot have all the rights a of a naturalized citizen, such rights as running for public office and donating to politics is given only to citizens).
4. Tax cuts for the rich must stop. If you make $250,000 a year or more you can suck it up and pay your god damn taxes. Period. If you think that's not fair your not vested enough in the success of your community and should probably be hanged(though if a candidate is not for that, I may be willing to get past it).
5. Separation of Religion and State needs to be practised in full... No exceptions. Leave god out of political speeches.
6. Implementation of Federally Funded public broadcasting, which will be required to give equal attention to all candidates during election years. Including moderated debates where each candidate gets the exact same question to answer.
7. Legalize weed for anybody over 18 and tax it for revenue(with limitations on taxation to prevent monopolistic, monoculture practises and give little grow operations a chance, in fact give grants to smaller operations and only allow each grow operation to have a certain number to be decided of plants(this will encourage different strains and cut down on monopolies like monsanto from infiltrating the market and homogenizing everything.
8. Food growing monopolies like Monsanto need to be split up and distributed amongst other entities(I believe farmland should be auctioned at low affordable prices to the people first to encourage sustenance farming and then what remains can be auctioned off to business entities). grow operation sizes must then be limited in a broad sense also to encourage small businesses and competition. This will disperse prosperity and create upward mobility for classes of people not given any opportunity previously.
9. Other business monopolies such as cable companies and deregulated public utilities companies need to be nationalized. If it is in public interest to protect these utilities than the government of the people should be charged with their operation. Options for privatization should be available where adequate funding is not available, but should be controlled by small businesses and growth should be very regulated to prevent price gauging.
10. Any business that refuses to conform, shall have its U.S. assets seized for the benefit of the U.S. citizens and the business is free to pursue business elsewhere with what remains. Good Riddance.
11. End Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts immediately. Bring troops home and find a way to get them adequate councilling. All troops that have seen combat should even be required to go through mandatory councilling before being injected back into society.
12. Start sizing down federal government agencies. The CIA is too big, the FBI is too big. Size down politician's salaries, size down federal government workers salaries, increase resources for state and local governments. per capita distribution of tax revenue is in order.
13. Give illegal immigrants options for nationalization. If they are illiterate provide english education and education geared towards becoming a legitimate citizen. Its hard to emigrate, but we are a country of immigrants and more tolerance towards people that have emigrated from their home countries to find a better life needs first to be implemented in policy. Uncle Sam... Tear down that wall.
14. No more prison for non-violent offenders. it costs too much and creates more systemic problems. We need to fund more rehabilitation centers, halfway houses et cetera. Prison doesn't work. Only people being confined because they are too dangerous to re-enter society should be in prisons. Others should be matriculated down through different tiers of rehabilitation programs and all work performed in prison should be paid at minimum wage. Also all persons leaving prison should not have to tell employers of their crimes after their debt to society has been paid.
15. Decriminalize drug use and prostitution, but not illegal drug dealing and pimping.
16. make starting a business easier. less fees for paperwork and incorporation documents. Also provide rent assistance for small businesses.
17. National rent control.
18. Single Payer Health Care.
19. New, New Deal... Build infrastructure for free public wifi in all major metropolitan areas. re-build roads, build more commuter trains using high-tech, efficient technologies and cross country high-speed lines. Use public resources for the public, build geothermal plants in all major cities and the needed infrastructure to provide energy to cities under energy tax(no more privatized energy price gauging, there are better smarter ways to do things). Invest significant money in solar research particularly organic photo-voltaic cells and batteries to reduce harmful impact on the planet, with an emphasis on sustainable.
20. Invest in birth control measures. Any sustainable efforts will be in vain if our population doesn't get under control. I don't think limiting the number of children in a family or intelligence based controls are useful. Education resources are not equal in this country and have had the effect of creating systemic ignorance in communities mostly inhabited by minorities. These measure would quickly become a Eugenics experiment gone wrong. Instead education resources need to be pooled across the country and distributed equally giving everybody an equal shot. Also mandatory, publicly funded post secondary schooling is in order. This could be anything from a vocational education to college, but cost of higher learning needs to get under control and we need to increase the overall intellect of the country. This means more school for everybody. Schooling the students get more control of. Students get to decide every course they take and their is less pressure to do well, but more to enjoy what they do, experiment with different fields until something clicks. We need to make learning exciting again.
21. Less funding to police and more funding to community based crime prevention programs.
22. Spawn upstream instead of trickle down economics. This means instead of giving money to the rich that already have money to help the economy, give more breaks, grants and aid to the lower and middle class, which they will be likely to either spend or to use to pay debt, thus helping them become more financially free and giving the greedy banks and business their money in turn(which is where the money will be spent). In the case of foreclosures provide government assistance to families being foreclosed on, the aid money will be put in a coded account that can only be used to pay their mortgage payments to ensure loans get paid back and everybody wins.
23. Stiffer punishment for greedy corrupt politicians and bankers.
24. Get back on a precious metal standard or some other system for validating the value of money instead of a debt system. Goldman Sachs can eat a dick. They have gauged the American worker enough. Cap interest rates and stabalize the economy... No more speculation... aka gambling for the rich. Get out of the European mindset of money and go back to simpler days when your dollar meant one dollars worth of precious metals and you could trade it in for that amount of gold or silver(also don't let banks take a cut of this money). Its yours you worked for it and it should be illegal. The banking system should be entirely operated on federal revenue and not on speculation, inflation and the like.
25. electronic voting machines are too easily corrupted. We need an online registry where votes from the machines can be verified by users and easily double checked by third party organizations. If any discrepancy is found it is fair game for legal investigation, by which any citizen or attorney may subpoena information(failure to provide such information will automatically result in restarting the election process). All software used on the voting machines will be the same and open source in an easily readable programming language like python. All system software will be open source and written in c. Any bugs in these systems need to be of the upper most importance.
26. more new, new deal, build solar distillation plants for salt water. The tides can turn turbines to generate electricity as the water enters the facility where it will evaporate under the glass structures and fresh water can then be condensed and sent through pipes trough the building to cool machinery which has heated due to friction. The heat generated can then be used any of many different ways to generate more electricity or to heat facilities needing heat and then the water can be treated and distributed.
"The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon."
Not sure about McGovern, but the rest of it is fairly accurate.
Without writing an entirely new constitution these are things I think we can and should do in this country. Maybe if we do, we can show ourselves that America is actually a nice place to live. We need to start to form a cohesive group. This is my open source draft for what I tentatively call the hacker party manifesto... If anybody wants to submit a better name or some other ideas I am completely welcoming. The above are things I don't want to compromise unless a better solution I have not thought of can be introduced. I hope something can get some momentum beside the tea party. I guess we will see. I am sure none of this will happen...
Predictions for the next few years. Republican president in 2012(who saw that coming), cuts to food stamps, ssi, federal cash assistance and medicaid. Increased unemployment benefits, though this will likely stop under republican control unless Obama is willing to compromise more democrat values. SSI tax cut becomes as permanent as the Bush tax cuts. More abandoned vehicles on highways, more foreclosures and more profits for big businesses. Unemployment will hit great depression levels, women will keep jobs more often than men and get more jobs than men. China creeps ahead in tech race. Small businesses close more, wallmart will thrive. Suicide rate increase. Increases in crime as unemployment runs out. Increase in police power to quell riots. political riots. More war... You will see. Union membership will continue to drop off. Workers rights will be obliterated. Sexual Harassment will rise.
I think we need an 10 year plan. Its not likely to happen in 2012, nor is it likely to happen in 2016, but maybe by 2020 we will able to affect political change with this growing mass of independent voters. Unfortunately the populous is not really capable of understanding complicated ideas. For example, most people have clearly had trouble managing their own finances. In desperate fiscal situations we've turned to organisations that have no vested interested in our financial freedom and we borrowed money at interest from these organisations. This is obviously an irrational thing to do because though it might help in a momentary bind it puts you in an even worse situation for your long term survival. Credit drives this countries economy and it has failed us, yet the goal of most political stimulus packages passed recently is to increase lending(the same anti-altruistic monetary practice that has sent America to the poor house). The problem is we are electing officials that cannot handle their own finances for positions which require tight budgeting. Go on craigslist and find me a business doing the same thing. In order to make important decisions, they want proof that your decisions have panned out previously(politically this principal is increasingly harder to measure due to our see-saw like political environment in this country... Who is responsible for what... and why? Who knows any more). The real dilemma is that both major parties seem equally at fault. We were drunkenly driven into a ditch and we handed the keys to an equally drunk passenger on this drunk bus full of drunk passengers and told them to get us out before the cops come and we all end up in serious trouble. Its become unbearable to watch.
For me to get on board, get off my ass and vote, this is what I want:
1. End free trade agreements with china and raise import tariffs to make it more attractive to manufacture goods in the country.
2. Require any business that wishes to operate in America to use at least 15% American workers if they employ workers in 5 or more countries 20% if they employ workers in 3 to 5 countries and anything less than 3 25% or more if they did not incorporate in America and 80% regardless if they are American based.
3. Lobby reform now! businesses may donate to the American political process, but that money will get filtered through a third party agency and distributed equally amongst all candidates that received the proper number of signatures and meet all other requirements of running for office. Additional money will be taken from any business that earns more than $1 billion dollars and operates in the United States to help fund the political process. No media organisations will be permitted to interview candidates as they will give more attention to those they favour to win(this will require making an amendment to the constitution that says business organizations cannot have all the rights a of a naturalized citizen, such rights as running for public office and donating to politics is given only to citizens).
4. Tax cuts for the rich must stop. If you make $250,000 a year or more you can suck it up and pay your god damn taxes. Period. If you think that's not fair your not vested enough in the success of your community and should probably be hanged(though if a candidate is not for that, I may be willing to get past it).
5. Separation of Religion and State needs to be practised in full... No exceptions. Leave god out of political speeches.
6. Implementation of Federally Funded public broadcasting, which will be required to give equal attention to all candidates during election years. Including moderated debates where each candidate gets the exact same question to answer.
7. Legalize weed for anybody over 18 and tax it for revenue(with limitations on taxation to prevent monopolistic, monoculture practises and give little grow operations a chance, in fact give grants to smaller operations and only allow each grow operation to have a certain number to be decided of plants(this will encourage different strains and cut down on monopolies like monsanto from infiltrating the market and homogenizing everything.
8. Food growing monopolies like Monsanto need to be split up and distributed amongst other entities(I believe farmland should be auctioned at low affordable prices to the people first to encourage sustenance farming and then what remains can be auctioned off to business entities). grow operation sizes must then be limited in a broad sense also to encourage small businesses and competition. This will disperse prosperity and create upward mobility for classes of people not given any opportunity previously.
9. Other business monopolies such as cable companies and deregulated public utilities companies need to be nationalized. If it is in public interest to protect these utilities than the government of the people should be charged with their operation. Options for privatization should be available where adequate funding is not available, but should be controlled by small businesses and growth should be very regulated to prevent price gauging.
10. Any business that refuses to conform, shall have its U.S. assets seized for the benefit of the U.S. citizens and the business is free to pursue business elsewhere with what remains. Good Riddance.
11. End Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts immediately. Bring troops home and find a way to get them adequate councilling. All troops that have seen combat should even be required to go through mandatory councilling before being injected back into society.
12. Start sizing down federal government agencies. The CIA is too big, the FBI is too big. Size down politician's salaries, size down federal government workers salaries, increase resources for state and local governments. per capita distribution of tax revenue is in order.
13. Give illegal immigrants options for nationalization. If they are illiterate provide english education and education geared towards becoming a legitimate citizen. Its hard to emigrate, but we are a country of immigrants and more tolerance towards people that have emigrated from their home countries to find a better life needs first to be implemented in policy. Uncle Sam... Tear down that wall.
14. No more prison for non-violent offenders. it costs too much and creates more systemic problems. We need to fund more rehabilitation centers, halfway houses et cetera. Prison doesn't work. Only people being confined because they are too dangerous to re-enter society should be in prisons. Others should be matriculated down through different tiers of rehabilitation programs and all work performed in prison should be paid at minimum wage. Also all persons leaving prison should not have to tell employers of their crimes after their debt to society has been paid.
15. Decriminalize drug use and prostitution, but not illegal drug dealing and pimping.
16. make starting a business easier. less fees for paperwork and incorporation documents. Also provide rent assistance for small businesses.
17. National rent control.
18. Single Payer Health Care.
19. New, New Deal... Build infrastructure for free public wifi in all major metropolitan areas. re-build roads, build more commuter trains using high-tech, efficient technologies and cross country high-speed lines. Use public resources for the public, build geothermal plants in all major cities and the needed infrastructure to provide energy to cities under energy tax(no more privatized energy price gauging, there are better smarter ways to do things). Invest significant money in solar research particularly organic photo-voltaic cells and batteries to reduce harmful impact on the planet, with an emphasis on sustainable.
20. Invest in birth control measures. Any sustainable efforts will be in vain if our population doesn't get under control. I don't think limiting the number of children in a family or intelligence based controls are useful. Education resources are not equal in this country and have had the effect of creating systemic ignorance in communities mostly inhabited by minorities. These measure would quickly become a Eugenics experiment gone wrong. Instead education resources need to be pooled across the country and distributed equally giving everybody an equal shot. Also mandatory, publicly funded post secondary schooling is in order. This could be anything from a vocational education to college, but cost of higher learning needs to get under control and we need to increase the overall intellect of the country. This means more school for everybody. Schooling the students get more control of. Students get to decide every course they take and their is less pressure to do well, but more to enjoy what they do, experiment with different fields until something clicks. We need to make learning exciting again.
21. Less funding to police and more funding to community based crime prevention programs.
22. Spawn upstream instead of trickle down economics. This means instead of giving money to the rich that already have money to help the economy, give more breaks, grants and aid to the lower and middle class, which they will be likely to either spend or to use to pay debt, thus helping them become more financially free and giving the greedy banks and business their money in turn(which is where the money will be spent). In the case of foreclosures provide government assistance to families being foreclosed on, the aid money will be put in a coded account that can only be used to pay their mortgage payments to ensure loans get paid back and everybody wins.
23. Stiffer punishment for greedy corrupt politicians and bankers.
24. Get back on a precious metal standard or some other system for validating the value of money instead of a debt system. Goldman Sachs can eat a dick. They have gauged the American worker enough. Cap interest rates and stabalize the economy... No more speculation... aka gambling for the rich. Get out of the European mindset of money and go back to simpler days when your dollar meant one dollars worth of precious metals and you could trade it in for that amount of gold or silver(also don't let banks take a cut of this money). Its yours you worked for it and it should be illegal. The banking system should be entirely operated on federal revenue and not on speculation, inflation and the like.
25. electronic voting machines are too easily corrupted. We need an online registry where votes from the machines can be verified by users and easily double checked by third party organizations. If any discrepancy is found it is fair game for legal investigation, by which any citizen or attorney may subpoena information(failure to provide such information will automatically result in restarting the election process). All software used on the voting machines will be the same and open source in an easily readable programming language like python. All system software will be open source and written in c. Any bugs in these systems need to be of the upper most importance.
26. more new, new deal, build solar distillation plants for salt water. The tides can turn turbines to generate electricity as the water enters the facility where it will evaporate under the glass structures and fresh water can then be condensed and sent through pipes trough the building to cool machinery which has heated due to friction. The heat generated can then be used any of many different ways to generate more electricity or to heat facilities needing heat and then the water can be treated and distributed.
"The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon."
Not sure about McGovern, but the rest of it is fairly accurate.
Without writing an entirely new constitution these are things I think we can and should do in this country. Maybe if we do, we can show ourselves that America is actually a nice place to live. We need to start to form a cohesive group. This is my open source draft for what I tentatively call the hacker party manifesto... If anybody wants to submit a better name or some other ideas I am completely welcoming. The above are things I don't want to compromise unless a better solution I have not thought of can be introduced. I hope something can get some momentum beside the tea party. I guess we will see. I am sure none of this will happen...
Predictions for the next few years. Republican president in 2012(who saw that coming), cuts to food stamps, ssi, federal cash assistance and medicaid. Increased unemployment benefits, though this will likely stop under republican control unless Obama is willing to compromise more democrat values. SSI tax cut becomes as permanent as the Bush tax cuts. More abandoned vehicles on highways, more foreclosures and more profits for big businesses. Unemployment will hit great depression levels, women will keep jobs more often than men and get more jobs than men. China creeps ahead in tech race. Small businesses close more, wallmart will thrive. Suicide rate increase. Increases in crime as unemployment runs out. Increase in police power to quell riots. political riots. More war... You will see. Union membership will continue to drop off. Workers rights will be obliterated. Sexual Harassment will rise.
Monday, December 13, 2010
OpenSUSE sleep function.
After much back and forth on operating systems, having tried FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Fedora and CentOS; I've decided to come back to OpenSUSE. Why? Because it feels more like home. Also it has features that as I've mentioned in other posts are just not comparable on other systems. It is true that Yast is available through oracle for other operating systems and if you are married to one of those systems I suggest checking it out as a taste of what you are missing by not using Suse. I currently use the ncurses version of yast to perform many administrative tasks. I also use midnight commander a lot when I can't remember where a certain file lives(not to mention its text editor is far superior to say, vi or vim... yes I said it). Since re-installing I've met with a few problems. I am not a power saving maniac(some optimization is good, but it can quickly become time consuming to get fine grained and not usually reliable control). The first thing that I noticed was that, though at some point in the past the sleep function worked seamlessly out of the box, it had been failing since my last install and is currently very buggy. So I set out to find the config file which I found using mc(midnight commander) residing at... /etc/pc/config.c/defaults. I found that there are a few options for putting a computer to sleep one could use as an alternative to the default user space suspend module (including tuxonice, userspace and kernel mode). the kernel mode module worked the best for me, but I still had some problems. Before I began experiencing problems my server would keep the ethernet device listening for connections when the rest of the system went to sleep and it would wake itself on lan and even wlan connections. So after much unsuccessful research I decided that maybe putting the whole system to sleep will not do any longer for my needs. Instead I decided to just put the monitor to sleep and spin down disks when possible(this option can easily be configured through the Suse control panel gui). I was still experiencing some efficiency problems. The external disk would rarely spin down and was even getting quite hot when not accessed. I did some more research and found that I could use the noatime option in /etc/fstab (so my fstab entry looks like this: /dev/sdb1 /home/*****/Desktop/the_disk ext4 acl,noatime,user xattr 03 (where ***** could be your username)) on my drives to prevent the operating system from journaling access times(I am interested in when the file was created or changed, but I could care less when it was accessed last so for me the trade of works. There is a definite trade off in security and your ability to log activity(for example it can come in very handy if you need to trace back files accessed maliciously) and you may not want to disable the option on your more important partitions(like root for example), but obviously it has its uses for power management). Apparently, the operating system will access the drive about every 5 seconds unless this option is turned off using the noatime option. While it is unlikely that the root disk will be spun down very frequently, if ever(making it almost un-necessary to toss this option(I decided to give it a go anyway as I am not running a particularly sensitive server(though I would not recommend it if you deal with mission critical data), but the external storage device and the monitor will be churning away only when needed(as will everything else, though its not likely to make too much difference).
Now since I am using a machine that is quite old to host my lamp server I decided to pop in a partition magic live cd and run some tests(I noticed in my logs that a segment of my hard drive is offline and thus more or less invisible to the operating system, this is likely due to age). It appears after some brief diagnostics that the drive is rather unhealthy(prefail I believe is the term it used). This is something that will command my attention in the future, but I can't afford to address it at the moment. The fix for this is a new drive and clonezilla, which is entirely within the scope of my understanding, but a new drive is out of the scope of my financial situation currently(hopefully it won't fail completely before I can address it)... Until then frequent back-ups are in order. On ubuntu I like deja dup for handling this, but since my server has no X on it, I've been using a python script to tar the files and store them on my hard drive, maybe I'll go into that next time.
Now since I am using a machine that is quite old to host my lamp server I decided to pop in a partition magic live cd and run some tests(I noticed in my logs that a segment of my hard drive is offline and thus more or less invisible to the operating system, this is likely due to age). It appears after some brief diagnostics that the drive is rather unhealthy(prefail I believe is the term it used). This is something that will command my attention in the future, but I can't afford to address it at the moment. The fix for this is a new drive and clonezilla, which is entirely within the scope of my understanding, but a new drive is out of the scope of my financial situation currently(hopefully it won't fail completely before I can address it)... Until then frequent back-ups are in order. On ubuntu I like deja dup for handling this, but since my server has no X on it, I've been using a python script to tar the files and store them on my hard drive, maybe I'll go into that next time.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
cyber security bill
The threat of a catastrophic cyberattack is real. It is not a matter of ‘if’ an attack will happen; rather it is a matter of ‘when,’” said a document issued by Lieberman and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
What the hell does Liberman know about the internet? That his good buddy Al Gore invented it? This is all abunch of bullshit. Suggestions have included introducing a new cyber identification system for everybody using the internet. I pity the fool that has to administrate that database. I am sure it will be another "uncrackable," algorithm. Nobody will ever steal your identity again because everything will be kept in one convenient place and controlled by one convenient password. This doesn't make you more secure, it makes you less secure. There is already human trafficking in America on a large scale, now we open the flood gates for human identification trafficking. If you so much as misplace your cyber identification you'll be up shit creek and god forbid somebody else get a hold of it. Sure it sounds good to people that know nothing about computer security. Put everything on a privatized government server. Servers get hacked every day. Say one of those servers gets broken into and everybody's cyber identity gets leaked in cyber space. This will happen. If your worried about a catastrophic cyber attack, don't use the internet for your banking transactions. Period. If this is a really big deal, bring back the intranet systems for networks that need security and don't connect those machines to the outside via the internet. God forbid an administrator have to get off their ass and walk to the physical location of a machine to get information from it. The point is that, the government is opening up a can of cyber-apocolypse worms all to sell your identity to private corporations. This mythical cyber attack is incredulous. If you don't want a machine tampered with remotely the only way to resolve that problem is not to connect it. So if this bill actually makes things worse what is the real purpose of the government making you use an identification system to get on line? Well they could create a massive database of search history used to profile users who might be potentially threatening to the status quo, who don't believe in a corporate welfare state where corporations are given control over our identity and accuse them of being a band of suburban russian spies. The government uses the patriot act to collect information about our purchasing history because we are at a time of wartime threat, which we are perpetually in with some nation or other somewhere, which protects us from our contrived enemy, by encouraging consumption of chinese goods. What is to stop the government from doing the same with our online identity. This is the equivalent to being forced to put up big brother in our homes. Big brother has no business here in a country purporting to be free. We are not free, we are being occupied by corporations both of domestic and foreign origin that would squeeze every last drop of blood from our stone bodies. Enough already. Joe Liberman should be the first to go. Vote him out now(like voting really matters). I'm sure youll all sit in front of your stupid television drinking your stupid beer, being stupid and do nothing about it until big brother is knocking down your door for more mandatory tax donations because government got too big to feed.
Another suggestion of this bill is to computerize the electricity grid system, by connecting usage meters to a database directly. This also makes you less secure. They will be crack and it will make it easier to tamper with than they already are. Somebody will release a program utility to do it and it will be much safer than it is currently to tamper with meters. It is also a way for corporations to cut more costs, they get the money from uncle sam to implement the policy, so they don't spend a dime and then they can cut employee jobs. You know the guy who went around looking at your meter. He'll be on his ass, so the taxes that will be funneled into this program can go straight to the ceo and the majority share holders who will make out like bandits again.
I think instead of this we should introduce an American Loyalty bill to limit corporate welfare. First if you do business in America, a certain percentage of your employees must be American. Second you cannot replace a person's job with a machine, if you implement a machine it is to improve the efficiency of a person. Third, raise import tariffs to make american goods cheaper in comparison. Third do not allow businesses from offshore nations that won't hold them accountable for scamming and defrauding americans in in the first place.
If our own government cannot be loyal to the people, but only to marauding corporate interests, we have the responcibility to deseat them by any means necessary.
What the hell does Liberman know about the internet? That his good buddy Al Gore invented it? This is all abunch of bullshit. Suggestions have included introducing a new cyber identification system for everybody using the internet. I pity the fool that has to administrate that database. I am sure it will be another "uncrackable," algorithm. Nobody will ever steal your identity again because everything will be kept in one convenient place and controlled by one convenient password. This doesn't make you more secure, it makes you less secure. There is already human trafficking in America on a large scale, now we open the flood gates for human identification trafficking. If you so much as misplace your cyber identification you'll be up shit creek and god forbid somebody else get a hold of it. Sure it sounds good to people that know nothing about computer security. Put everything on a privatized government server. Servers get hacked every day. Say one of those servers gets broken into and everybody's cyber identity gets leaked in cyber space. This will happen. If your worried about a catastrophic cyber attack, don't use the internet for your banking transactions. Period. If this is a really big deal, bring back the intranet systems for networks that need security and don't connect those machines to the outside via the internet. God forbid an administrator have to get off their ass and walk to the physical location of a machine to get information from it. The point is that, the government is opening up a can of cyber-apocolypse worms all to sell your identity to private corporations. This mythical cyber attack is incredulous. If you don't want a machine tampered with remotely the only way to resolve that problem is not to connect it. So if this bill actually makes things worse what is the real purpose of the government making you use an identification system to get on line? Well they could create a massive database of search history used to profile users who might be potentially threatening to the status quo, who don't believe in a corporate welfare state where corporations are given control over our identity and accuse them of being a band of suburban russian spies. The government uses the patriot act to collect information about our purchasing history because we are at a time of wartime threat, which we are perpetually in with some nation or other somewhere, which protects us from our contrived enemy, by encouraging consumption of chinese goods. What is to stop the government from doing the same with our online identity. This is the equivalent to being forced to put up big brother in our homes. Big brother has no business here in a country purporting to be free. We are not free, we are being occupied by corporations both of domestic and foreign origin that would squeeze every last drop of blood from our stone bodies. Enough already. Joe Liberman should be the first to go. Vote him out now(like voting really matters). I'm sure youll all sit in front of your stupid television drinking your stupid beer, being stupid and do nothing about it until big brother is knocking down your door for more mandatory tax donations because government got too big to feed.
Another suggestion of this bill is to computerize the electricity grid system, by connecting usage meters to a database directly. This also makes you less secure. They will be crack and it will make it easier to tamper with than they already are. Somebody will release a program utility to do it and it will be much safer than it is currently to tamper with meters. It is also a way for corporations to cut more costs, they get the money from uncle sam to implement the policy, so they don't spend a dime and then they can cut employee jobs. You know the guy who went around looking at your meter. He'll be on his ass, so the taxes that will be funneled into this program can go straight to the ceo and the majority share holders who will make out like bandits again.
I think instead of this we should introduce an American Loyalty bill to limit corporate welfare. First if you do business in America, a certain percentage of your employees must be American. Second you cannot replace a person's job with a machine, if you implement a machine it is to improve the efficiency of a person. Third, raise import tariffs to make american goods cheaper in comparison. Third do not allow businesses from offshore nations that won't hold them accountable for scamming and defrauding americans in in the first place.
If our own government cannot be loyal to the people, but only to marauding corporate interests, we have the responcibility to deseat them by any means necessary.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
seeds safe from mansanto
I found this list from: Home Grown Edible Landscapes on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=249293493742
Abundant Life Seeds
Amishland Seeds
Baker Creek Seed Co.
Berlin Seeds – no known website
Botanical Interests
Bountiful Gardens
Burpee Seeds (hybrid pepper and tomato seeds are provided by Monsanto)
Cook's Garden (owned by Burpee - see above)
Diane’s Flower Seeds (she has veggies now, too)
Fedco Seed Co. – http://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/monsanto.htm
Garden City Seeds
Heirloom Acres Seeds
Heirlooms Evermore Seeds
Heirloom Seeds
High Mowing Seeds
Horizon Herbs
Irish-Eyes
Kitchen Garden Seeds
Lake Valley Seeds
Livingston Seeds
Local Harvest
Mountain Rose Herbs
Organica Seed
Peaceful Valley Farm Supply
Pinetree (no GMO seeds but did have a long relationship with Seminis before being bought by Monsanto. They have promised to send me a list of those seeds so that consumers can avoid them if they desired.) *PineTree (Superseeds) just sent me the list of seeds they buy from Seminis. Please see below for the full list)
Renee’s Garden
Richters Herbs
Sand Hill Preservation Center
Seed Saver’s Exchange
Seeds of Change
Southern Exposure
Territorial Seed Company - *Tom Johns, the pres. of Territorial posted in the comments on my blog about Seminis being owned by Monsanto, and said customer service will provide a list of seeds they buy from Seminis, so you can avoid them. He also said that Seminis is providing less varieties every year (typical of Monsanto) and they are finding suitable replacements. So, don’t count them out completely.*
Tiny Seeds
Tomato Fest
Underwood Garden Seeds
Uprising Seeds
Victory Seeds
Wildseed Farms
Wood Prairie Farm
I encourage heirloom gardening, I think it is the best way to fight back and preserve a family of seeds that have a history of adapting to their environment safely.
Abundant Life Seeds
Amishland Seeds
Baker Creek Seed Co.
Berlin Seeds – no known website
Botanical Interests
Bountiful Gardens
Burpee Seeds (hybrid pepper and tomato seeds are provided by Monsanto)
Cook's Garden (owned by Burpee - see above)
Diane’s Flower Seeds (she has veggies now, too)
Fedco Seed Co. – http://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/monsanto.htm
Garden City Seeds
Heirloom Acres Seeds
Heirlooms Evermore Seeds
Heirloom Seeds
High Mowing Seeds
Horizon Herbs
Irish-Eyes
Kitchen Garden Seeds
Lake Valley Seeds
Livingston Seeds
Local Harvest
Mountain Rose Herbs
Organica Seed
Peaceful Valley Farm Supply
Pinetree (no GMO seeds but did have a long relationship with Seminis before being bought by Monsanto. They have promised to send me a list of those seeds so that consumers can avoid them if they desired.) *PineTree (Superseeds) just sent me the list of seeds they buy from Seminis. Please see below for the full list)
Renee’s Garden
Richters Herbs
Sand Hill Preservation Center
Seed Saver’s Exchange
Seeds of Change
Southern Exposure
Territorial Seed Company - *Tom Johns, the pres. of Territorial posted in the comments on my blog about Seminis being owned by Monsanto, and said customer service will provide a list of seeds they buy from Seminis, so you can avoid them. He also said that Seminis is providing less varieties every year (typical of Monsanto) and they are finding suitable replacements. So, don’t count them out completely.*
Tiny Seeds
Tomato Fest
Underwood Garden Seeds
Uprising Seeds
Victory Seeds
Wildseed Farms
Wood Prairie Farm
I encourage heirloom gardening, I think it is the best way to fight back and preserve a family of seeds that have a history of adapting to their environment safely.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
harvard imposter... so what.
here is the story: http://www.aolnews.com/2010/05/19/alleged-harvard-impostor-rejected-by-new-republic/19483379/?icid=main|aim|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2F2010%2F05%2F19%2Falleged-harvard-impostor-rejected-by-new-republic%2F19483379%2F
All I can say about this is, so what. The whole education system from the time you enter it as a small child is designed to funnel you into a college, where you continue to regurgitate information you probably don't really understand. Its not like a teacher can fail you for answering the precise textbook definition of a term. The testing officials claim that these standards will help us be globally competitive down the road, but it seems clear to me what they really want. Retail workers who can memorize product specs, not really understand them, but be able to sell to another retail worker. How else will we maintain America's reputation for being the consumer of the worlds goods. Its important that my sister be able to spit out a very skewed definition of voltage and simultaneously, not understand what voltage is or how it can be harnessed. The whole system is designed to scam you out of money you don't even have yet. You will come out of the college of your choosing, with the debt of your choosing and it has the effect of ensuring you will have to enter the work force. Now nobody wants somebody without experience, so you will have to start at the bottom anyway, but presumably, you'll work your way back up. Schools like harvard have been used to make sure you must know somebody who knows somebody in order to have a real fighting chance to make it. Good grades and a lot of money are sometimes not even enough to get into an "ivy league," school. The graduates of harvard are the ones who will have the MIT graduates work under them to generate ideas and new technologies they can exploit, send to china to manufacture and ship back to a retail location where maybe you, as a college graduate, have moved up assistant manager, by the time your parallel stories collide again. If somebody scammed the education system, they did what we all should have done, took it back for the people, because education should be free. It shouldn't be about forcing those that don't care to learn to regurgitate information they don't understand. It should be about making the information freely accessible to anybody that wants it. If we wish to become competitive in education globally, we need to provide education without limits to those who wish to learn. I think more people should be doing this. This poor kid will probably spent a lot of time in jail, because he had the where-with-all to go to the slave masters and demand his freedom. People want to get indignant because they think they are entitled to their Harvard education, they worked hard for their grades, even the bad ones, but get this through your heads, nobody owes you shit, just because your Daddy had enough money to send you to harvard.
What Americans need more than anything is a good hard ass kicking, one that isn't followed up by overprotective parents getting litigious over a broken nose or a black eye. Kids will and should get in fights, it will build character, and you will know, nothing will be handed to you except your ass.
Today kids get into fights and one of them gets arrested, goes to jail and once entering the system, become institutionalized. Their life will be lived largely between those concrete walls, because they had the balls to stand up to somebody, or the strength to put down somebody that stood up to them. These people will be funneled into the military, because they will recieve no education in institutions, they will be angry and you can begin to focus that anger on whoever you want as long as you give them an outlet for that anger.
The football players that didn't make pro, will be funneled into the police. They learned that coach will always tell them what to do, so now sergeant will do the same.
The world is run by rich people that can't protect themselves, so they pit the poor against the middle working class, to ensure that both will have their hands full with enemies and never figure out who is responsible for all of it. Who funneled crack into the ghetto to introduce more desperation... Who depleted the resources of the middle class, creating more disparity between the middle and upper class and foreclosed on your house and forced you to move closer to the desperate poor crackheads, that will rob you because you have more and they pine for drugs. Who is it that refuses to lend money the government took from you and gave to them. That money is yours, not theirs and you have to beg to get it back. Who replaced your shitty cashier job with an automated machine that can't even get the job right. Who takes your tax money that should be going to public libraries, after school programs, homeless shelters, et cetera and funneled it into for profit, privatized prisons, ensuring that the poor will have no resources left, but to start jacking, get caught, go back to jail, where it costs the tax payer $80 to $120 a day to keep them in a cage, when you could have paid them $8 an hour to do something useful and keep them out of jail.
When are you going to see that the numbers don't add up... Why do they need to increase taxes %6 and lay off teachers? Could it have anything to do with the overwhelming infrastructure of government jobs, their jobs, that they won't sacrifice for you or me. Could it be because the governor of the state makes $175,000 when you sit around the poverty line, working two jobs so you can pay back your student loans? its horse shit. Wake up and take uncle sam's dick out of your ass.
All I can say about this is, so what. The whole education system from the time you enter it as a small child is designed to funnel you into a college, where you continue to regurgitate information you probably don't really understand. Its not like a teacher can fail you for answering the precise textbook definition of a term. The testing officials claim that these standards will help us be globally competitive down the road, but it seems clear to me what they really want. Retail workers who can memorize product specs, not really understand them, but be able to sell to another retail worker. How else will we maintain America's reputation for being the consumer of the worlds goods. Its important that my sister be able to spit out a very skewed definition of voltage and simultaneously, not understand what voltage is or how it can be harnessed. The whole system is designed to scam you out of money you don't even have yet. You will come out of the college of your choosing, with the debt of your choosing and it has the effect of ensuring you will have to enter the work force. Now nobody wants somebody without experience, so you will have to start at the bottom anyway, but presumably, you'll work your way back up. Schools like harvard have been used to make sure you must know somebody who knows somebody in order to have a real fighting chance to make it. Good grades and a lot of money are sometimes not even enough to get into an "ivy league," school. The graduates of harvard are the ones who will have the MIT graduates work under them to generate ideas and new technologies they can exploit, send to china to manufacture and ship back to a retail location where maybe you, as a college graduate, have moved up assistant manager, by the time your parallel stories collide again. If somebody scammed the education system, they did what we all should have done, took it back for the people, because education should be free. It shouldn't be about forcing those that don't care to learn to regurgitate information they don't understand. It should be about making the information freely accessible to anybody that wants it. If we wish to become competitive in education globally, we need to provide education without limits to those who wish to learn. I think more people should be doing this. This poor kid will probably spent a lot of time in jail, because he had the where-with-all to go to the slave masters and demand his freedom. People want to get indignant because they think they are entitled to their Harvard education, they worked hard for their grades, even the bad ones, but get this through your heads, nobody owes you shit, just because your Daddy had enough money to send you to harvard.
What Americans need more than anything is a good hard ass kicking, one that isn't followed up by overprotective parents getting litigious over a broken nose or a black eye. Kids will and should get in fights, it will build character, and you will know, nothing will be handed to you except your ass.
Today kids get into fights and one of them gets arrested, goes to jail and once entering the system, become institutionalized. Their life will be lived largely between those concrete walls, because they had the balls to stand up to somebody, or the strength to put down somebody that stood up to them. These people will be funneled into the military, because they will recieve no education in institutions, they will be angry and you can begin to focus that anger on whoever you want as long as you give them an outlet for that anger.
The football players that didn't make pro, will be funneled into the police. They learned that coach will always tell them what to do, so now sergeant will do the same.
The world is run by rich people that can't protect themselves, so they pit the poor against the middle working class, to ensure that both will have their hands full with enemies and never figure out who is responsible for all of it. Who funneled crack into the ghetto to introduce more desperation... Who depleted the resources of the middle class, creating more disparity between the middle and upper class and foreclosed on your house and forced you to move closer to the desperate poor crackheads, that will rob you because you have more and they pine for drugs. Who is it that refuses to lend money the government took from you and gave to them. That money is yours, not theirs and you have to beg to get it back. Who replaced your shitty cashier job with an automated machine that can't even get the job right. Who takes your tax money that should be going to public libraries, after school programs, homeless shelters, et cetera and funneled it into for profit, privatized prisons, ensuring that the poor will have no resources left, but to start jacking, get caught, go back to jail, where it costs the tax payer $80 to $120 a day to keep them in a cage, when you could have paid them $8 an hour to do something useful and keep them out of jail.
When are you going to see that the numbers don't add up... Why do they need to increase taxes %6 and lay off teachers? Could it have anything to do with the overwhelming infrastructure of government jobs, their jobs, that they won't sacrifice for you or me. Could it be because the governor of the state makes $175,000 when you sit around the poverty line, working two jobs so you can pay back your student loans? its horse shit. Wake up and take uncle sam's dick out of your ass.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Going Green to Save my Marraige...
As Americans, we are interested in hot button issues... The keywords that are to debates as a big mac is to a hamburger... Usually it looks good on television, its cheap and mass produced, but when it comes to substance its really ill defined. Most importantly these keywords drive the debate quickly, because in America we need to get things done now, now, now... Who cares what the end result will ultimately be, as long as the initiative and hard work drive the product it must be good... However like everything in America, we are getting what we paid for with the cheap, mass production corporate green movement... Lots of simple keywords, filled with addictive additives that keep us coming back(green is the new crack), but is anything beneficial coming of corporate America dipping their greasy hands into this pristine "movement?" Can you really expect change when the business is conducted in the usual, closed door, keep the inquisitive citizens out way? Look past the packaging into the truth, Solar Panels are largely made from silicon, the production of which, produces harmful byproducts, CFL light bulbs though being paraded around on television as the innovation that will save humanity, are filled with poisonous mercury, Biomass fuel production facilities have been caught dumping glycerin into the water supply... The point being that large scale production usually has negative impacts on the environment, naturally the damage to the environment is usually correlated to the size(among other variables such as toxicity of materials and byproducts) of the operation exponentially maybe even logarithmically though the exact equation eludes my understanding. It seems quite plain that some correlation can be made between the size of the operation and th impact on the environment and the delicate homeostasis our planet is slowly slipping away from. We get 400 trillion trillion watts/second from the sun. A large amount of that gets absorbed into the atmosphere, some of it gets reflected back into space, what remains is stored in a number of different forms. We somehow find ourselves stuck in an energy crises, exacerbated by our insatiable desire for conquest... Mast of us waste this energy charging our iphones to find out what somebody a hundred miles away is doing with their life immediately. While this is an incredible technology that most of us can't begin to understand, nor does anybody seem to care to, it shouldn't be our priority right now.
We have over 300 million citizens in America and less than 2 million farms that works out to %6. How is %6 of the population supposed to support %94. A similar statistic can be derived from labor statistics. The Capitolist class in America consists of %1 of the population. With another %5 being considered rich. The total of these two categories is less than half of those living below the poverty line. The working class is between 40-45% and the Middle Class is said to be another 35-40%. This suggests that 90% of Americans are doing the working jobs, making things the ultra-rich sell and profit from. The Average salary at Exxon is $65,000, while the CEO makes $22,400,000, thats over %300 more, but who does the work that keeps the business profitable?
I think in order for the green movement to gain any real traction it needs to sever ties with these large corporations and their ultra-rich ceos that attempt to co-opt the movement and make it another profitable ad campaign...
We have over 300 million citizens in America and less than 2 million farms that works out to %6. How is %6 of the population supposed to support %94. A similar statistic can be derived from labor statistics. The Capitolist class in America consists of %1 of the population. With another %5 being considered rich. The total of these two categories is less than half of those living below the poverty line. The working class is between 40-45% and the Middle Class is said to be another 35-40%. This suggests that 90% of Americans are doing the working jobs, making things the ultra-rich sell and profit from. The Average salary at Exxon is $65,000, while the CEO makes $22,400,000, thats over %300 more, but who does the work that keeps the business profitable?
I think in order for the green movement to gain any real traction it needs to sever ties with these large corporations and their ultra-rich ceos that attempt to co-opt the movement and make it another profitable ad campaign...
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