Category: observations

So a little more work with this. I found that SSH Tunnel Manager seems to stop working if the system goes to sleep (possibly something to do with the network socket being closed). Giving up on that, I started looking around for some of these “script to application” utilities I have been hearing about. ScriptGUI seems to work just fine: you take the text of a script, drop it into the editor window, save it and you end up with a double-clickable app. Uses a little more disk space 😉

white:~/Desktop paul$ du -sk Secure\ Tunnel.app tunnel.sh
296 Secure Tunnel.app
4 tunnel.sh

This is the command line I ended up with. NB: your.internet.gateway is placeholder text and logging into it may require authentication each time. Read on for more.

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/ssh -N -v -p 22 -C -c 3des your.internet.gateway -L 8080/your.internet.gateway/3128 2>&1 > /dev/null &

The tunnel does shut down when the system goes to sleep/the network socket closes, but this makes it easy to rebuild it. SSH Tunnel Manager seemed to get hung up with that.
Continue reading “secure/paranoid wireless, continued”

After a few too many attempts and a lot of Googling, I finally figured out how to make a reliable ssh tunnel for my wireless network.

I got it to work on the command line (ssh red -L 8080:red:3128) and then decided to turn it over to SSH Tunnel Manager. It turned my simple command to something a bit more precise (/usr/bin/ssh -N -v -p 22 -C -c 3des paul@red -L 8080/red/3128)
So far, so good. If I can stand the speed loss, it should be useful.
Continue reading “secure/paranoid wireless networking”

I decided to investigate my iBook’s weak battery. After not quite two years, it appears to have lost almost 90% of its charge (748 / 4400 = 0.17).

"IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=748,"Amperage"=443,"CycleCount"=552,"Current"=596,"Voltage"=12598,"Flags"=838860807,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4400})

This translates to being able to work for 4 hours on battery to about 40 minutes.
Looks like I need to find a good source for a battery as well. They seem to run about $100.

<update: Thu Oct 6 21:55:35 PDT 2005 > just scored one on ebay for $40, new in box.

This — Daily Kos: Bush Supporters of the Far Right: Cries from the Lake of Fire — is too strong, too complete to try and prise out just one passage. Warm yourself by the glow of righteous, articulate anger.

Bill “the kitten vivisector” Frist and his recent unloading of stock in the family business is about more than just the mythical blind trust.

Pump and Dump Politics:

According to Thompson Financial analyst Mark LoPresti, quoted in several of the stories, the key piece of inside information that Frist and the other insiders had that others didn’t was this:

Uninsured patient admissions were rising faster than those of insured patients

Let’s consider why it might generally be considered a conflict of interest for Frist to own so much HCA stock. The main concern would be that Frist might be in a position to use his public power to improve the financial condition of such hospitals; for example, he could push for some kind of increased coverage for the uninsured or even universal health care. He might have a public motive for doing so, but he might also have a private motive, since it would hugely benefit a hospital chain like HCA. That’s the reason for putting all his stock in a blind trust, so that he won’t know, and we know that he won’t know, whether he would benefit privately.

But when the uninsured ratio goes up, and Frist actually knows that this will affect his own portfolio, paradoxically his reaction isn’t what the normal conflict-of-interest analysis would assume. Rather than use his official power to reduce the number of uninsured, he takes a private action, and just dumps the stock. And not just any stock, this is his patrimony he’s selling out. It’s the stock of his own family’s company. But he washes his hands of it. Leaves it to some bigger sucker.

And that, to me, is telling, and it’s about more than Frist’s despicable character. Because it goes to the great paradox of what is currently called “conservatism.”

In other words, he might have taken some steps to address the shortfall for uninsured patients, against the fiduciary interests of his family and himself: hence the blind trust. But did he? No, he played the game like a crooked insider and unloaded his holdings, selling out his family and the citizens he has pledged to serve.

What a creep.

I want to both increase the storage on my iBook and improve it’s performance: a bigger, faster drive will do that.

But what to get? Hitachi TravelStars look like the best thing going. Anyone have any experience with them? Recommendations on something else?

I found one quote attributed to Galbraith and upon looking it up, I found this gem.

John Kenneth Galbraith – Wikiquote:

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

Continue reading “quotable”

TNR Online | Swimming with Sharks:

Everyone who watched this summer’s race for College Republican National Committee (crnc) chair with any detachment has a favorite moment of chutzpah they admire in spite of themselves. Leading the count are the following: speaking sotto voce of your opponent’s “homosexuality” rigging the delegate count so that states that support your candidate have twice as many votes as those that don’t; and using a sitting congressman to threaten the careers of undecided voters. I can understand the perverse appeal of each of these incidents. But I cast my vote for the forged letter.

The letter arrived via fax to the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, on the eve of the crnc convention in June. The three-day convention is attended by student delegates from across the country who, after enduring a four-month campaign filled with importuning, backstabbing, and horsetrading, vote for a chair. Most campaigns culminate with the handpicked establishment candidate inheriting the two-year, $75,000-a-year position without much of a fight. But, this year, the establishment candidate, Paul Gourley–the handpicked successor of the last chairman, who was the handpicked successor of the chairman before him–faced a vigorous challenge from an insurgent, Michael Davidson, a smooth-talking 25-year-old Berkeley grad.

Since the fax appeared unexpectedly in the final days of the race, it created an unmitigated frenzy among the conventioneers. The letter announced that the chairman of the Missouri delegation had completely replaced his state’s official slate of delegates (who all happened to support Davidson).

This is how the other side learns how to win: they cheat, they lie, they are willing to stab their fellow-party members in the back to win — whatever.

It’s interesting to me how, well, Darwinian, this all seems, with “survival of the most ruthless” as the guiding principle. Maybe I am thinking of Lord of the Flies.

This is the party that claims to be moral, to be forthright and honest, to have an ethical compass that never wavers.

A rhetorical question, answered in the article: a homogeneous population allows consensus more readily than a more diverse one. But the real answer is that they chose to make them themselves what they are: open, fair, and economically vibrant. What choices are we making?

The Seattle Times: Why can’t we be more like Finland?:

Finland has largely remade itself over the last 35 years, revamping its education system, transforming its medical-care structure and creating a new high-tech sector that, thanks to cellphone manufacturer Nokia, has become an international player. Today Finland is regularly cited as among the world’s best in a variety of indices and comparisons. For example:

• The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, ranks Finland’s the most competitive economy in the world.

• Yale and Columbia universities rank the nations of the world in a “sustainability index” that measures a country’s ability to “protect the natural environment over the next several decades.” Finland ranks first.

• Statistics kept by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that Finland invests more of its gross domestic product in research and development than any country except Sweden.

• According to a global survey by Transparency International, Finland is perceived as the least corrupt country in the world. (The United States is tied for 17th.)

• Finns read newspapers and take books out of libraries at rates as high or higher than all other countries.

• Finnish 15-year-olds score first in the industrial world on comparative tests of their academic abilities.

• Finland trains more musicians, per capita, than any other country.

But consider: what segment of Americans self-identifies itself the most representative American? White, northern Europeans, the so-called heirs to the Judeo-Christian founders (yes, I know it’s bulldust, but don’t quit reading just yet), living largely in the South. Yet, what group most vociferously oppose the very ideas that Finland (and other nations) have adopted that make their societies more equitable and more dynamic and competitive? Hmm, the same people who think America is the greatest place on earth (largely because they live there) consistently oppose the ideas that could actually make their boasting a reality.