Planet TACLUG

Adam Monsen: Electric Fury

adam — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 15:27:37 +0000

Last night was Who Killed the Electric Car? night. Based on the facts presented in the movie it seems pretty clear who really killed the electric car. I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t–as Dave Barthmuss claims–the consumers.

But who cares? You don’t have to wait to get an electric commuter vehicle, you can pick one out right now!

Adam Monsen: Mr. T is Still On

adam — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 23:46:57 +0000

I guess the overall idea is cool, but the fighting metaphors are too darn funny:

Yes, I am qualified to beat people up. But I am pretty intelligent. That’s what throws people off. If you’ve been through something, that gives you an authority that you can speak on certain things. That’s why people relate to me. I pull no punches.

Said Mr. T, about his new TV show.

Chuck Wolber: The FRC on Internet Gambling

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 23:18:40 +0000

The hits just keep on coming. Here's the latest from the FRC:

Putting the Bite on Internet Gambling

In an important victory for families, the House of
Representatives yesterday passed the Internet Gambling
Prohibition and Enforcement Act (H.R. 4411). The vote was
a lopsided 317-93.

The first thing I thought of when I saw this, was a quote from the Christian author, C.S. Lewis:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. "

I truly believe that this legislation is yet another brick in the wall, stealing what precious liberty we have left. It shouldn't be a matter of allowing or disallowing someone from gambling. It should be about empowering individuals and local municipalities to make that decision for themselves. Places like Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada have decided that gambling is ok for them and have arranged their society around it in an organized fashion. Don't like it? Then get away. Go somewhere else. Trust me, there are a lot of people that think like you do and they'd be more than happy to get together and create "gambling free" zones.

Let's put it another way, Jesus saves souls through a willing heart. Legislating morality does not lead to a willing heart anymore than the Inquisition or the crusades lead to widespread furtherance of Christianity. If anything, those events set back the spread of Christianity, and continue to do so to this day. A good Christian speaks the word and leads by example. The FRC, and groups like them, think they can short circuit the process by leveraging legislation rather than trying to leverage The Word.

One of those who voted against it was liberal Rep. Barney
Frank (D-MA) who said: "If you don't like internet gambling,
don't do it." Fortunately, Frank's callous attitude was not
shared by the majority of his own party.

Callous attitude? It's more like the "liberal" Rep. Barney Frank should be praised for attempting to keep the rights with the people where they belong. I'm not arguing whether gambling is right or wrong. Personally, I think you're an idiot if you want to spend more than about $20 a year at a Casino, but it's your right if you want to do it. Why? Because you cannot stop people from being self destructive. If you stop one vice, they'll find another. If the FRC really cared about people destroying their lives with gambling they'd be in the Casinos and anywhere else that vice can be found trying to reach the people with The Word.

When I was learning to be a new father, my own Dad put it this way, "Kids are like balloons. Everytime you squeeze one end, the air just shoots into the other end. Pay attention to your Son and don't let the pressure build up because you cannot simply expect that by suppressing one behavior that it won't come out in some other way."

There's broader recognition of the harms of
gambling to families and communities. I was happy to see
Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the
National Basketball Association, the National Hockey
League, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association
all backing this bill. Forty-eight of 50 state attorneys
general back the bill. I especially want to thank
Congressmen Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Jim Leach (R-IA) for
their tireless efforts in behalf of honesty in government
and security for families.

Call me cynical, but I believe that this much agreement, especially among politicians, is unnatural. If everyone agrees, very few people are thinking, and that's dangerous. I'll bet that if you interview each and every one of them, you'd be surprised at the amount of reservation you'd find.

This measure will help block the $12 billion off-shore
gambling industry.

No it won't, and if you believe it will, you show a profound ignorance of how the Internet works.

It should be noted that Jack Abramoff is no longer at
large to stalk the halls of Congress lobbying for the
gambling interests. That surely made a difference.

Oh and don't forget Republican Tom Delay is gone too, one of Jack Abramoff's good buddies.

Chuck Wolber: Another one from the FRC...

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 23:40:28 +0000

Another doozy from our friends at the FRC (Family Research Council).

Taxes Cut, Deficit--not Sky--Falls

Liberals wrung their hands when President Bush first
proposed tax cuts back in 2001. It would ruin the economy
and balloon the deficit, they wailed. Now, we are seeing
the deficit falling rapidly. This year's deficit of $296
billion is 30 percent lower than projected just last
February. That's a $127 billion decline from that February
forecast. Revenues have increased, accounting for 90
percent of the deficit reduction. This is an historic
moment and President Bush is right to call attention to the
success of his pro-growth economic policies.

WOW! This is an amazing example of newspeak. Where do I begin...

First, this nutjob is assigning causality to a taxcut. There's no evidence whatsoever that a taxcut is what stimulated the economy. Big hint, taxcuts do not reduce deficits, tax revenue reduces deficits. It's the same as when you use your credit card less because you have more cash in the bank. The only causal factor that you can possibly imply (and it's still not proven in this case) is that taxcuts stimulate the economy which might lead to increased tax revenue.

Second, perhaps it would be inconvenient to remind the FRC that the Clinton administration managed to eradicate the deficit and had us on the way to paying off the national debt in 14-ish years. Unfortunately, we (once again) have a ballooning national debt that (according to the FRC) is growing slightly slower than projections. Big whoopy, it's still growing and would have stopped growing and would have reversed if it hadn't been for this taxcut.

Third, perhaps the FRC doesn't realize that they are a strong supporter of communism and regimes that do all they can to quash independent religious expression. Just who do they think is buying up all of our debt? If they had half a clue they'd realize that foreign governments like the Chinese are buying it up. The national debit is a lever other governments can use to manipulate the US. Don't believe it? Debt maintenance is now the 3rd highest budgetary priority. At the rate we're going, it won't be long until debt maintenance equals the tax income and we have to start going into debt to pay the debt maintenance. At that point, we're going to have to bow down to a lot of nations in order to get some debt relief.

FRC supported those tax cuts, especially the pro-family
portions of the tax package. Now we see that they are
working to the benefit of all Americans.

Huh? Pro-family? Perhaps this guy failed to see that the taxcut benefited the rich disporportionately. George Bush himself got a taxcut equal to the entire average income of a middle class family, while said average middle class family barely got enough taxcut to cover a few tanks of gas.

Oh but I digress. You say that "we see that they are working to the benefit of all Americans", but you never show us how. You just threw out that goofy statement and unfortunately a lot of your readers are simply going to lap it up like the religious automatons that they are (And yes, I am a Christian. I believe the lord Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins. I do not, however, use that belief as a cudgel to manipulate others. Jesus said to "Spread the good news", he did not say to manipulate and deceive.).

Adam Monsen: Dang Pigeon, Keeping me Up Late!

adam — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 06:58:05 +0000

Biodiesel and Petals Around the Rose are keeping me up late tonight.

The Pigeon? It’s a reference to a book by Mo Willems (thanks, Katie!).

Ok, ok. Good night already!

Adam Monsen: Thinking Recursively: Assignment 01

adam — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 13:15:51 +0000

Eva, Keith and I decided to work through Thinking Recursively. Here’s the first assignment, should anyone care to join us:

Exercises 1-1, 1-2, and 1-3
Due 05-AUG-2006

Adam Monsen: Thesaurus Words

adam — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 05:37:47 +0000

Sometimes when I read a word I don’t know, instead of looking it up in the dictionary I just search Google. If the first hit is a link to a Wikipedia article or to a definition in an online dictionary, I deem that word a Thesaurus Word. It’s almost as if the word exists just to be used by people with (a) large vocabularies, or (b) plenty of time to thesaurusize.

Cases in point: quotidian, hegemony, prevarication.

Chuck Wolber: Water Skiing

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 19:31:47 +0000

I went water skiing for the first time today. I was up and skiing on two skis my first try. After a while I was even swinging back and forth behind the boat and jumping the wake. It got a little dicey when I tried wakeboarding. After 5 tries I simply could not get up on the darn thing. It was even worse when I tried skiing on one ski. The only wipeout I had was when I was on two skis and tried dropping one of them. *BLAM* I hit the water hard :) Aside from drinking more than my fair share of Puget Sound, it was fun. I'd definitely do it again.

Adam Monsen: A Lauderdale 4th

adam — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 17:58:00 +0000

I married into the coolest family. During our stay we’ve had a great time hanging with the kids, elders, and friends. As far as touristy stuff, we checked out the History museum, Lake Harriet, the Gibbs Museum, and the new Central Library in downtown Minneapolis. Not to mention fireworks, food, toothbrush rugs and no tagbacks.

Thank you, Pierces!

Chuck Wolber: Gay: Sin or Not?

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 18:50:26 +0000

I wonder if there are any "seasoned saints" who can answer the following question for me:

If Jesus truly did come to fulfill the law, is it worse to be gay and love Jesus as your lord and savior or is it better to be straight and not recognize Jesus as your lord and savior?

Chuck Wolber: Car Accident

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 20:10:21 +0000

Got read-ended yesterday on I-5. Went to see the adjustor today. I'll probably have repairs started tomorrow...

Adam Monsen: Slow Foods vs. Low Income

adam — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 06:08:22 +0000

Why does it have to be “versus”? Can the two coexist?

A recent “Weekday” broadcast featured Hsiao-Ching Chou, the food editor for the Seattle PI. She had many useful inputs on eating local/organic/sustainable/slow food. However, her big rebuttal on the topic of organic/locally grown produce being too expensive and “elitist” was as follows:

Many low-income people don’t have time to cook, don’t know how to cook, don’t know what to do with these fresh items, so they rely on cheap, processed products with no nutritional value. They could by fresh lettuce, it’s a good deal at farmer’s markets. The problem is really education.

WTF?! Are you kidding me? Education is not the problem with low-income consumption of local/organic/sustainable/slow food. Cost is. And convenience (which really just boils back down to cost). It costs more. It is yuppie and elitist.

People want cheap, so they’ll buy Chilean-born bananas for 99 cents a pound at the local super, and not think twice about the real cost of those bananas.
Sorry for my very inaccurate transcript. You should check out the show to hear it in her words.

Chuck Wolber: Polls are not Votes...

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 19:53:23 +0000

I'm on the "Family Research Council" e-mailing list. The FRC is a whack-job organization that was foaming at the mouth with enthusiasm when Bush threw in his election year support for the gay marriage amendment. I get their emails once per day. Usually they're pretty entertaining. Most of the time they're full of logical contradictions (which most sheeple miss). I credit the philosophy 101 class I took in my senior year of college as well as the inhuman amount of statistics I was compelled to learn, with helping me to be able to pick out the logical inconsistencies in what people say. I used to complain directly to the FRC about the logical inconsistencies in their emails, but I never get a response. Today I'm going to start complaining publicly... I'm Today's FRC "episode" you see the following (with my comments interspersed):

Be leery of public opinion polls on the issue of marriage.

Hmmmm, past FRC "newsletters" love to throw around phrases like "opinion polls consistently show XYZ". Wonder why they're so quick to point out that one should be leery of opinion polls?

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) has pointed out how very
different the polls are from the actual votes. Here are
some typical cases showing what the polls said about
protecting marriage in various states prior to the votes
and how the citizens of those states actually voted.
Arkansas: 64.8% (75%); Georgia: 69% (76%); Kansas: 56%
(79%); Kentucky: 71.6% (75%); Louisiana: 62% (78%);
Michigan: 52% (59%); Montana: 61% (67%); Nevada: 43% (67%);
North Dakota: 53% (73%); Ohio: 48% (62%); Oklahoma: 59%
(76%); and Oregon: 50% (57%). Why such a big difference
between pre-vote polls and the actual votes? It's probably
a combination of two major factors.

Using the equation "(1-poll/vote)*100", Let's show the actual percent difference for each poll and vote:

Arkansas: 13.6%
Georgia: 9.21%
Kansas: 29.11%
Kentucky: 4.5%
Louisiana: 20.51%
Michigan: 11.86%
Montana: 9%
Nevada: 35.8%
North Dakota: 27.4%
Ohio: 22.58%
Oklahoma: 22.37%
Oregon: 12.28%

The average difference was 18.2%. They're right, that's a stastically huge difference, even when you take into account a +/- 3% margin of error. Wonder why such a huge difference?

Having been in politics for a while I've seen how polling
questions can be constructed to obtain the desired outcome.
The slanted poll questions no doubt account for some of the
difference.

Ah yes, excellent move. Present your "resume" first, then present your opinion as fact! No one's going to realize that you just passed off an unsubstantiated opinion as fact.

I've seen how polling questions can be constructed to obtain
the desired outcome. The slanted poll questions no doubt
account for some of the difference.

Really!?!?! It's great to see that you've finally come around to this. I wonder if this means you won't be wasting time in the future with polls that you find favorable?

Secondly, and probably more prominent, is the intimidation
factor.

Is that what you're calling it now? In the real world, it's called "sampling error". That means the people who voted weren't the same ones who participated in the polls.

Unscrupulous politicians like Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA)

I'm sure the typical FRC reader will take this at face value, but for those who actually form their own opinions, it's usually helpful to provide a reference to bolster your hyperbole.

rant that protecting marriage is "bigotry, pure and simple."
It's no such thing, but Kennedy and company want
to intimidate people. Some people are fearful of being
labeled a homophobe or bigot so they keep their opinions to
themselves until they are in the privacy of the voting
booth and then on average over 70% defend marriage as the
union of one man and one woman.

Again, slipping in opinion as fact. There are no studies indicated to back this up. Let's put together some of the facts and speculate on what might really be going on. The poll values and the vote value difference indicate that there was a sampling error. This jives with past statements by people like Paul Weyrich that indicates that the fewer people who vote, the more ground the conservatives pick up. Its very possible, although I won't pass it off as fact, that the poll/vote discrepancy is because many of those polled weren't fired up enough to vote. In other words, an issue like gay marriage tends to draw a certain type of voter. Since it's difficult to get off your butt and vote, unless you have a motivation, the vast majority probably aren't going to take the time to vote. On the other hand, pollsters work hard to get an even distribution of likely voters to participate in their polls. The discrepancy was probably because the pollsters did *TOO* good of a job getting an even distribution of what people really think.

Adam Monsen: 5-D Rubik’s Cube Applet

adam — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 16:26:43 +0000

http://www.superliminal.com/cube/applet.html

I don’t know why/what/how this thing is, but it looks pretty cool!

Chuck Wolber: Gay Marriage

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 18:38:45 +0000

Soon the president of the United States is going to announce his support for an anti-gay marriage amendment to the US Constitution. Will anyone connect this with the fact that it is an election year?

Chuck Wolber: Network Chat

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 16:49:23 +0000

Almost 19 years ago to the day was the first time I chatted with someone else over a computer. I was 13 years old. We dialed each other up using those goofy old 300 baud phone coupler modems. I learned all sorts of cool stuff about terminal emulation that way.

Adam Monsen: Slashback: IDEs, Native X/VNC, Alloy

adam — Thu, 25 May 2006 04:44:27 +0000

IDEs … I’m always interesting in how people actually write code. Ask Slashdot recently spurned an interesting debate by asking asking whether or not students should be taught an intro to Python or Java course using an IDE. I kept finding my self re-agreeing with different posters.

Native X/VNC … Forest showed me a really neat trick using Xorg and VNC that appears to come stock with Fedora Core 4. Simple and efficient desktop sharing is fairly new for GNU/Linux, so, cool!

Alloy … A colleague of mine, Dick Wurdack, turned me on to a design analysis tool called Alloy. I’m still learning it, but it looks to be a pretty useful arrow for the quiver.

Chuck Wolber: A hidden lesson...

Wed, 24 May 2006 06:47:13 +0000

Sometimes life is more about what you don't do than what you do do...

Chuck Wolber: My 10th anniversary...

Wed, 03 May 2006 16:53:42 +0000

I just realized that it's the tenth anniversary of the very first website I ever put up.

Adam Monsen: The Teriyaki Mystery

adam — Wed, 03 May 2006 05:24:14 +0000

Anyone remember a time about 15 years ago before there were any teriyaki joints? Soon after, they began popping up everywhere, and with near identical menus, flavors, and atmospheres. There had to have been some secret congress deep underground, where would-be teriyaki entrepreneurs got together to plan their delicious rampage across the nation. Why are all teriyaki restaurants so similar? Is there some unofficial franchise manifesto they all adhere to? Why do they exist at all? And why is it so damn good?

I love teriyaki.

Chuck Wolber: Cold or Flu

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 23:50:22 +0000

I've had a cold or a flu for the last few days (can't tell the difference). It started as a very sore throat and has expanded into a veritable hydra of symptoms. It's a very creative disease, I'll give it that. Yesterday I was sneezing all day. The day before, I couldn't hear out of one ear. Today, my nose has been itching. It's not regular itching though. It's the kind of itch that exists in the untouchable 4th dimension. I can feel the itch, but nothing I do can make it go away. Crinkling my nose seems to work temporarily, but like that 'ole cat that keeps coming back, the itch creeps back in when I'm not looking.

Chuck Wolber: First day of spring...

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:27:29 +0000

It's beautiful here today in the great Pacific Northwest, not a cloud in the sky and a balmy 60-ish degrees (Faherenheit). I wish I was at home with my Son. We'd probably got to the park and play some ball. I'm half tempted to cut and run for the day, pick him up from school early and go play. I guess today's his first day of track practice though and he doesn't want to miss it. Perhaps if tomorrow's nice, I can surprise him by picking him up early from school.

Chuck Wolber: It's that time of the year again...

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 04:57:55 +0000

Mmmmm, one of my favorite times of the year. No, I'm not talking about Spring. It's girl scout cookie time!!! Woohoo. My favorites are Thin Mints and Samoas. I bought some lemon drops and shortbread cookies, but they weren't as good.

Chuck Wolber: digg - Submit Item

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 03:56:58 +0000

A gentleman named Joe Flynn has come up with a dramatically new type of electric motor. It is NOT a free energy or perpetual motion machine or what have you. It's just a really innovative electric motor design based on a very simple magnetic phenomenon that is resulting in motors that are up to 98% efficient.

read more | digg story

Chuck Wolber: Jack Abramoff and the Native Americans

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 18:30:41 +0000

I really like this article. It was purposely written in only a few paragraphs to make it easy to understand. It explains what this whole Jack Abramoff furor is all about and how it goes *WAY* up the foodchain. In a nutshell: A lot of native Americans got their trust land taken away in the Dawes act of the late 1800s. The idea was that the government would "rent" out their land to ranchers and mining companies and pay the rent back to the native americans who had rights to the land. The payments never happened, thus the Cobell vs. Norton class action suit. As it turns out most of the records that show how much the government owes have been "lost or destroyed". Thus the lawsuit seeks to open the books of the industries that used the land. Jack Abramoff comes into the picture because he greased a lot of pockets to help the republican lead effort to prevent industry from being accountable.

Aren't the Republicans supposed to be the party of accountability?

Chuck Wolber: Mistaken Identity

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 03:29:37 +0000

I just read an article about a small commuter airline pilot who lost his job because he had the same name as someone on the TSA's no-fly list. It's clearly a case of mistaken identity, as the last paragraph points out that the pilot who lost his job is a white Irish immigrant, while the person on the no-fly list that bears his same name, is hispanic.

As an amateur pilot myself, I can't begin to tell you how frustrating this is to hear. You work very hard for your aviation certifications, in both time and money. In doing so, you gain a profound respect for the decades of work that went in to creating the global aviation system. Then to see it all go away because of the actions of someone who bears the same name is indescribable.

I understand that the no-fly list has a good and noble purpose. I support that purpose whole heartedly. It's just that we are taught, from a very young age, that we are responsible for our own actions. We are also taught that everyone else is responsible for their own actions. For those who don't take their responsibilities seriously, they get removed from areas of society through mechanisms like the no-fly list, jail, probation or good 'ole fashioned "time-outs". It's considered, and rightly so, a profound miscarriage of justice when someone is forced to pay for the crimes of someone else.

I believe that eventually enough people will be wrongly punished by the TSA's misguided efforts, that it will create a critical mass of dissent. The only way to relieve the growing pressure is to install logical checks and balances on their power. Anyone on the no-fly list, should have the right to a speedy appeal to an impartial panel/jury/judge empowered with the ability to remove them (or not) from the no-fly list. Until that happens, pressure is going to continuously build up.

Chuck Wolber: Electronics Stores

Sun, 22 Jan 2006 05:11:45 +0000

I've been looking for some good local electronics shops that are open on the weekend. So far, the best I've found is Vetco Surplus. They've got a pretty good selection along with some quirky stuff that's fun to look at. I've heard there are others, but apparently the market is shifting on these small mom & pop shops.

I used to really like Radio Shack, but they seem to have sold their soul to consumer electronics. Pretty soon they're just going to be YACS (Yet Another Computer Shop). Fry's is pretty much the same. They used to have a great selection of discrete electronics here at the Renton, Washington store. Unfortunately their parts are disgustingly overpriced and the selection has slowly whittled down to nearly nothing.

Places I've been told about, but haven't yet checked out are Radar Electronics and Alphatronix. There's also a neat store in Tacoma called C And C Electronics, but they're only open during the week.

I'd love to see if a superstore type hobby shop is feasable in the Seattle area. It wouldn't just sell discrete electronics, but anything else hobby related. I figure something like that would take at least ten million dollars to open and about 4 or 5 million to keep running for the first few years until it made a profit. Features of the place would be fair prices, knowledgable employees, free workshop and class space, idea workshops and product incubators. It'd also have regular sales and various customer enticements, as well as work very closely with local schools to foster creative ideas. A good starting concept would be Neal Gershenfeld's book FAB. According to a recent interview by Neal on NPR's Science Friday, he's been inundated with people dying to make his vision a reality.

Chuck Wolber: Commercial Irony

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 06:00:37 +0000

Hilarious string of commercials tonight. First a pretty inspirational Weight Watchers commercial. Had great music (I think it's something by Cher) a storyline (as much as a 30 second commercial can develop) and good photography. Just as I'm getting excited about losing weight (TIC), the next commercial comes on for... wait for it... "Rich Dairy Queen" treats... Oh the irony...

Charles Mauch: Xen, ArchLinux, and some purty graphs

Charles — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 23:42:02 +0000

I’ve completed my notes on getting Xen up and running. As of today, I’m almost completly back up and running, but with some caveats. Unfortunately, there has been no progress in getting ArchLinux working with Xen (at all), so until someone smarter than me can figure out why I can not even manage to chroot into my old arch environment - I’m going to abandon any attempts to work with Arch in the near future.

I’m guess this means that I’ll be using Debian Sarge, Ubuntu Breezy Badger, and the latest versions of Gentoo and NetBSD, which isn’t such a chore. Really :)

One thing I did do in Xen that isn’t particularly standard is to create a small embedded gentoo style firewall, which is run as a guest or domU in Xen. It only eats a little more than 20 megs of ram, and runs shorewall as an interface to iptables, boa (a webserver), rrdtool to make purty graphics, dropbear (a ssh daemon), syslog-ng (which sends logs to a syslog server I have), and fcron to handle log rotation and cleanup. It sits between three linux software bridge devices, and routes data between the internet, a virtual dmz, and a virtual lan (all which only exist on my workstation). It’s neat stuff, and terribly fun to play with.

I also created some rrdtool graphs and a (very broken) interface for them in php to view stats on my xen host. You should check it out. It’s fun to chart the history of your cpu’s temperatures.

So in the near future, I’ll try and spend some time organizing the next LUG meeting, and waiting for that extra 512 megs of ram arrive.

Happy New Year folks!

Charles Mauch: Lost in Xen

Charles — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 11:59:41 +0000

For those of you wondering where the heck I’ve been for the last few days, I’ve been exploring Xen. A lot of formatting of hard disk partitions has ensued, and I’m really glad for once I had the foresight to use LVM instead of standard partitions when I setup my workstation a while ago. It’s made the process a lot easier.

I’ll eventually have a complete write-up on how I got it all running, but at least now I can read email browse the web. It was a fight for a while.

Oh, and I’m playing around with some new themes. Just for the heck of it. So the site might look quite a bit different in the next few days. The url’s will not be changing though.

Chuck Wolber: PriceRitePhoto: Abusive New York Camera Store

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 21:33:07 +0000

Just read this blog entry about an abusive NY Camera Store. It's pretty amazing to see the lengths people will go to, to be dishonest. To me, it just seems like a lot more work to live your life that way.

As a business owner myself, I can vouch for how hard it is to build up a a reputation and a client base. It's definitely much easier to lose customers than it is to gain them.

Chuck Wolber: Driving Habits

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 05:49:42 +0000

The other day I was wending my way through traffic. As I normally do, I was on a constant scan for holes that would allow me to advance my position in the flow of traffic. After exploiting a few opportunities and stopping at a red light, I noticed a blond woman that I'd passed (and been passed by) a few times, looking at me really annoyed, as if to say, "all of lane changing and it didn't even get you anywhere". In the past I've had people ask me as much, when I told them about the way that I drive. Is it so hard for people to realize that I'm totally cool with driving the way that I do, even if it gets me to my destination slower some of the time?

Let me say one thing before we go on though. I'm definitely not one of those jerks whinging my way from lane to lane so fast that my back can be seen swerving. I give plenty of space between me and the car in front of me, and I do not change lanes unless I have room to do it safely without causing people to tap their brakes.

What I do do is constantly exploit growing gaps in order to make it through traffic in a more efficient manner. I find this activity interesting and fun. My mind is constantly calculating vectors and lines of sight. I fully acknowledge that it does not always result in a more efficient path through traffic. In fact, many times it results in a loss of favorable position. I really am ok with that. What I've gotten out of the experience is a respite from the usual boredom that driving brings, perhaps some time savings and an opportunity to improve my driving skills.

Charles Mauch: The problem with su and root

Charles — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 00:04:32 +0000

Current GNU/Linux distributions use the “su” model to elevate user priveledges. SU (or Substitute User) is a simple command which allows you to assume another identity on your pc. It’s most-often use is to become the root or administrative user. Both GNOME and KDE provide graphical tools which perform the same task, allowing you to install packages, change your resolution, and so on. I’ve been using su for many, many years now. Usually to become the root user.

The root account in unix is the holy-grail of hackers for a good reason. With it, you have absolute control of a computer. You can format disks, change any configuration file at whim, and you can remove any trace that those changes happened. Su and root violate the entire security principal of least priveledge.

To compensate, over the years I’ve come up with a variety of tools to allow me to track changes made while I’m the root user. I store my .bash_history, require comments be made on logout describing changes, and use a brightly colored red shell prompt to log commands and remind me that while logged in as root; I can do a lot of damage. The other problem with su/root is that I’m required to remember the root password for every computer I manage. As something of a security professional, this means I have to keep a record of a ton of different passwords.

About a year ago, I ran across a simple solution but didn’t realize it. I tried to solve a simple windows file sharing problem on my little brother’s OS/X machine. OS/X runs a variant of BSD underneath all the glitz and eye candy, so I figured I’d just login as root and fix up his samba config. It took me a while to realize exactly what was happening when my brother informed me that there was no “root” account. You had to use a tool called sudo.

I thought it was a wierd way of doing things, but I liked the idea of a unix machine without root. About six months ago I installed Ubuntu. Ubuntu doesn’t use the root account either. Like Mac’s it uses sudo to ensure that the proper person is making changes to the system. After getting “used” to not having a root account, I’m sold.

Why sudo?

Sudo is a tool that supports allowing users to use their own credentials for privilege escalation. No two passwords. No root user. Furthermore, sudo already supports granularity. If Linux distributions used sudo instead of su by default, you wouldn’t have to give out the root password to anyone who needed to become an administrator on a unix box.

In a nutshell, here are some of the features and reasons to use sudo:

Least privilege : Some users need to be able to change network configs, or shutdown the pc without root. Sudo allows specific users (or groups of users) to run specific commands, and not any others.
Logging : Every single command used through sudo is logged. This enables you to see who did what which is great from a security point of view, and essential from a troubleshooting point of view. When used in tandem with syslog, you can log all restricted commands to a central “log host”.
Timestamping : Sudo uses timestamp files to implement a “ticketing” system. When a user invokes sudo and enters their password, they are granted a ticket for 5 minutes. Each subsequent sudo command updates the ticket for another 5 minutes. This avoids the problem of leaving a root shell where others can physically get to your keyboard. There is also an easy way for a user to remove their ticket file, useful for placing in a .logout file.
Shared Configuration : Sudo’s configuration file, the sudoers file, is setup in such a way that the same sudoers file may be used on many machines. This allows for central administration while keeping the flexibility to define a user’s privileges on a per-host basis.
Root Shells : Sudo avoids the “I can do anything” interactive login by default - you will be prompted for a password before major changes can happen, which should make you think about the consequences of what you are doing. If you were logged in as root, you could just delete some of those “useless folders” and not realize you were in the wrong directory until it’s too late.
Script Kiddies : Every cracker trying to brute-force their way into your box will know it has an account named root and will try that first. What they don’t know is what the usernames of your other users are.
Box Ownership : Sudo allows easy transfer for admin rights, in a short term or long term period, by added and removing users from groups, while not compromising the root account.

A little fiction

Here is a typical scenario for the use of sudo which shows in practical terms, why GNU/Linux distributions should be using it by default instead of su and root.

Alice is a contractor who provides IT services and tech support for their customer, a small car audio service shop managing a number of Fedora desktops. The shop employs ten service techs, a manager, and a receptionist.

The techs all share workstations, or at least access to them. They have their own work areas, but in order to make troubleshooting easy, they frequently move around a lot and all of them have accounts on each other’s computers. They use a variety of applications related to their troubleshooting work, some which are customized not only for the shop, but for each tech’s specialty.

The manager uses typical office applications, but on a laptop. She connects to wireless networks at remote locations regularly, and as a result needs to be able to tweak network and wireless settings when away from the shop. The manager isn’t particulary pc savvy, and needs to be walked through configuration changes, sometimes on the phone without network access

The receptionist plays a lot of simple games like solitaire to pass the time on slow days. She quickly burns through them and is constantly installing and removing new games.

Alice was hounded constantly by the techs or the receptionist who needed to change screen resolutions or install (and ocassionally compile) their applications. She’d get calls at 5:00am from the manager asking for how to get on the wireless network at Starbucks. Eventually, Alice gave up and now everybody has the root password plastered to their PC on a sticky-note.

The tech’s (who were adept computer users) quickly began browsing through each other’s emails and generally begin to spy on each other. The receptionist began to break her configuration about once a week. And the manager had no concept of root and still calls for help.

Sudo solves a few of Alice’s problems. First, it allows the technicians to install applications from an internal repository, but denies them access to each other’s files and email. Second, the manager can now change her wireless settings without having to bother to login as root at all, eliminating some of the compexity of getting online. And thirdly, the receptionist can now install as many variants of solitaire as she wishes, without having to worry about breaking her computer’s configuration. And to top it all off, sudo can log every single command to syslog!

The Gory Details

So how can you apply all of this to your own GNU/Linux box? It’s pretty easy! First, install sudo if it’s not already installed. Now fire up visudo (as root) to edit your /etc/sudoers file. The syntax is pretty simple. To get started, try something like this.

root ALL=(ALL) ALL
cmauch ALL=(ALL) ALL
%users localhost=NOPASSWD: /sbin/mount /cdrom,/sbin/umount /cdrom
%users localhost=NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown -h now

Replace ‘cmauch’ with your username. Later on you can tweak. Save the file. Now disable the root account completely by typing this in.

passwd -l root

This works by changing the root password to a value which matches no possible encrypted value. Now log out of root and login as yourself.

The next time you need administrator access to something, simply prefix any commands you want to run with sudo. EG:

sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

You’ll be asked to confirm your own password, and shezam!, your running. A quick look at /etc/auth.log also shows the entire command logged. Eg:

Nov 25 03:30:33 redbox sudo: cmauch : TTY=pts/5 ; PWD=/home/cmauch ; USER=root
; COMMAND=/usr/bin/vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf

The second example in the configution above shows how to begin to implement least priveledge. In a nutshell, this example allows users in the “users” group to mount and unmount the cdrom drive, and to shut down their pc without the root password or even a password prompt.

If you want to poke at a more complex configuration to look at, be sure to google sudo or check the sudo website.

Some Caveats and a Warning

Since your probably appying this change to a distribution that isn’t sudo friendly, keep the following in mind.

User accounts typically don’t have /sbin or /usr/sbin in the default $PATH. As a result, you may need to add those directories to a users’ path, or better - create a symbolic link between the command you’d like them to be able to use (/sbin/shutdown) and (~/bin/shutdown). In Debian in particular, if you plan on using apt-get, aptitude or deslect, you’ll need to have /usr/sbin in your path. Icky.

Some tools like webmin require both root access and a root password. There isn’t a great workaround for this except to perhaps use other tools which do not require root access. Besides, It is kind of creepy to allow any piece of software root access over the web.

When your filesystem becomes completely corrupted and your machine drops into single user mode on boot, you might find yourself locked out of your computer and unable to boot into single-user mode at all because this requires the root password. You can either patch sulogin to handle this, or you can do as I do and simply boot from a USB or CDROM drive to fix things up.

Chuck Wolber: An Evening With Kevin Smith

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 04:45:15 +0000

I'm watching "An Evening with Kevin Smith" tonight. What a great show! Kevin Smith can tell some great stories and really knows how to work an audience. One thing that really intrigued me was at time index 1:01:24 on disk two. There's a strawberry blond woman with a phone number written on her hand. I have a really nice DVD player connected up to a new TV (not HD) via expensive RGB Monster cables (not to be mistaken with RCA cables). The screen is about as clear a representation of the DVD that you can get with today's technology. I can make out the area code (320) and some of the other numbers, but I can't seem to see the rest. It's not that I don't have a life, but stuff like that jumps out at me and seems interesting to explore. Has anyone else observed that? Have you figured out the entire number? Ever called it?

Chuck Wolber: Tech Ghetto

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 07:02:46 +0000

Some of us live in the tech ghetto. We're talented, intelligent and good at what we do. Secretly though, we know we're living a lie. It's easy to do what we do, so easy in fact that it's obvious to us that we're artificially limiting ourselves. The reasons are varied, job security, laziness or fear. When asked what we're specifically good at, we simply state that we're a jack of all trades, yet a master of none. Inside we realize that we've gotten as far as we've gotten on talent and that we could go so much further if we'd simply put more effort into ourselves. This is the tech ghetto. We're not going anywhere, yet we all dream of getting out.

Thankfully, I've gotten a chance to change that in my life. Working at this latest opportunity I'm creating something real that I can put my name on and be proud of.

Chuck Wolber: Realms of Knowledge

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 22:42:13 +0000

This isn't new. It's interesting to me, and I came up with it on my own, but I'm 100% sure that someone had to have thought of this before me. Any pointers to some authoritative research on this would be greatly appreciated.

Working in a knowledge environment is a microcosm of the way information appears to flow throughout the world.

The smallest bit in the realm of knowledge is the single human domain of perception. Thoughts are generated constantly in this domain, most of which are discarded. Occasionally a thought of some redeeming value bubbles up, forming a packet of information that is deemed worthy of communicating to another individual.

The vast majority of that which is communicated from one human domain of perception to another is discarded. Occasionally an idea has sufficient value that it takes on a life outside of any individual human domain of perception. At this point, the idea becomes "group knowledge" or "tribal knowledge".

Tribal knowledge usually only works for a small subset of any population. Outside of that subset, the knowledge has little or no value. However, on occasion tribal knowledge leads to innovations that help entire populations. This slowly becomes global knowledge within a certain discipline. A good expample would be of how an individual at one time found a wonderfully effective method of dying clothes. This person spread that method throughout their tribe. Eventually the information proved valuable to the textile industry, and thus became global knowledge within the textile industry.

Every once in a while, discipline based global knowledge escapes the confines of the given discipline and becomes "common knowledge". An example of this would be Einstein's famous "E=MC^2" equation. Not everyone knows what it does or means, but it is "common knowledge".

From the pool of common knowledge comes "Universal Knowledge". Not all common knowledge becomes universal. However, when something attains universal knowledge status, it can reasonably be expected that anyone in the world would be aware of that knowledge. An example of this seems to be strikingly difficult to nail down, as most examples of universal knowledge seem to be basic stuff that one can observe on their own (eating, sleeping, sun rising, etc). The universal knowledge I speak of here would have been generated at one time from a singular consciousness.

Beyond universal knowledge seems to be "true universal knowledge". A piece of information that has bubbled up from a singular conscience, that every human being is guaranteed to know, would be considered "true universal knowledge". I suspect that such a thing does not exist.

Chuck Wolber: Direction

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 22:34:51 +0000

In the absence of a clear direction, a computer will freeze. It will cease to function and wait for direction from a higher power. In contrast, a human being, in the absence of clear direction, tends to make some sort of decision. The basis of that decision has been studied since humans attained the power of reason. The last place you're going to find an answer is here. It's just an interesting issue to ponder.

Reading the Bible and listening to angry evangelists would have you believe that the fatal flaw in humans is the fact that they actually make decisions in the face of a dearth of information. I think the real problem is that people are made to feel that their future actions can have an affect on their past. Thus if you feel guilty enough and do enough penance, it'll erase the past. Or, in other words, you are a good person until you screw up, at which point, you lose any right to feel control over your own life, and owe your salvation to a higher power.

At this point, my only contribution to this debate is not new, but makes a lot of sense to me. It's not how you handle the past, but how you react to your past and how you use that to guide your future. A statement like that only leads to more questions, but at the end of the day, at least helps me to frame them in a way that makes sense and helps me move forward.

Chuck Wolber: Slashdot Comment Moderation

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 18:43:55 +0000

CmdrTaco has been trying to leverage crowd wisdom for years with his comment moderation system. I think a key problem is that he dosen't use a big enough sample size. It only takes a few people to moderate a comment up to the highest level. The rules of crowd wisdom state that the larger your sample size, the more likely you are to arrive at the "correct" answer. Granted, with something like a story comment, there is no "correct" answer, only interesting and relevant responses. CmdrTaco's goal was not to tease out the interesting comments though, it was to filter out the irrelevant and wasteful spam.

In essence, CmdrTaco had no choice. Spam was starting to choke slashdot comments and making them less than useful. The moderation system saved the comment system, but didn't, as many people assume that it should have done, make the comments more interesting.

I believe that if the prevailing attitude among slashdot developers is to "weed out the spam", we'll see a slow decline of slashdot's popularity until it's made irrelevant by RSS feed aggregators.

IMHO, the attitude *SHOULD* be to exploit slashdot's major differentiator over simple aggregators, which is the community it has created. In other words, they should invert the "weed out the spam" attitude into a "make the comments more interesting" attitude. It's a subtle difference and, on the face of it, it would appear that one begets the other. I contend that weeding out spam does not make comments more interesting and conversely, making comments more interesting won't weed out the spam. Thus we come to the root of the problem, two crosswise goals.

CmdrTaco has to worry about the system from a performance standpoint. Weeding out the spam means less bandwidth and storage costs. That's immediate ROI, and a good thing on many levels. The community, however, needs more than 1,2,3,4 or 5 to determine what comments to read and which to ignore, to make them interesting. I can conjecture at a few ideas that would make it better, but I do not know the ultimate solution, and I doubt anyone else does either. I believe the problem requires more than just CmdrTaco playing whack-a-mole with ideas, meta-ideas and meta-meta-ideas etc. It requires serious PhD dissertation level study.