Welcome
- January 14, 2018
- Spectre and Meltdown first patch metrics
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It's amazing how the highly graphical computational operations aren't being impacted as much by the patches in place. I'm gathering from this information that my CLI configuration isn't helping me as much as I once thought.
The nature of the beast is "stealing data from other programs operating in core" so the approach has to be fairly sophisticated up front. The reads with patches in place aren't so much a problem as the writes which took a 26% hit on average.
So the path to patching appears convoluted with hardware patches coming from each manufacturer and software patches coming from those vendors.
My load has increased slightly with the patches in place; but this was expected and I overkilled it so much up front that I have lots of wiggle room in the performance department.
Suffice it to say that I will primarily be relying on the firewalling in place as it seems to be the most effective deterrent to those adventurous exploitative scumbags from foreign jurisdictions and I have already implemented a significant Class A Network scope and will continue to add subnets as required based on firewall metrics because it appears to be my only true hope.
Have fun and be safe.
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- January 13, 2018
- Stephen Foster Memorial Day
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Stephen Foster was a posthumous superstar with elementary school children during that time I attended ...
Primarily because his music was featured everywhere in each and every one of the music classrooms I encountered from the first grade through the eighth or so.
I know that I became intimately familiar with his work having sung all those standard numbers anywhere and everywhere.
Today we have a federal holiday in his honor called Stephen Foster Memorial Day which has been in effect since 1967 and persists to this time and place.
Stephen Collins Foster is known as "the father of American music" because of the widespread popularity of what was called "parlor and minstrel music" and which I always referred to as "folk music".
He has remained popular with his catalog of over 200 songs all of which are still in print — and I cannot think of anything that might detract from them aside from the SJW morons who think everything is about them.
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- January 12, 2018
- Doreen Tracey, RIP
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When I was a kid I consumed a lot of Mickey Mouse Club on the teeve. I was not so much a fan as it was appropriate television for the likes of a little boy in the United States.
Doreen Tracey
Singer, Dancer, Actress, Mouseketeer
April 13, 1943 – January 10, 2018
I would sit there enthralled by the various serials presented and the song and dance numbers and I knew most all of the characters by name ... I guess that comes with steadily watching over time.
One of those original 'mouseketeers' was a little girl named Doreen Tracey. She was much older than me but occupied that place frozen in time afforded by syndication and reruns and therefore she was mine and I was hers as it was with Annette and many of the other young ladies before me.
Over the years I moved on to other television venues as is the case with growing up and sometime in my adulthood I recall reading of her falling on desperate times and having to resort to work of a pornographic nature.
Understanding and being familiar with difficult times myself, I never judged her for this and my focus remained on her as the mouseketeer among the others, case closed.
I was sorry to learn on Wednesday that Doreen Tracey died of pneumonia as a result of a two-year battle with cancer. She was 74 years old. Rest in peace.
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- January 11, 2018
- Meltdown and Spectre
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Sometimes the cure is just as bad as the ailment. The two exploits Meltdown and Spectre have patches in place on my workstations and servers.
Others utilizing my distribution of operating system are reporting widespread crashes with the patches made available just this week. I have the same kernel patches — two of which arrived just this week — which operate fine and dandy. I'm not really noticing much in the way of performance deficit ...
But the boxes don't get hit with any traffic that the processors can't handle, there are high bandwidth NICs attached to a pipe that won't quit and the CPUs have never utilized any virtual memory (of which there is an ample supply) nor is there evidence for anything other than the usual and dumbass hack attempts from people trying their hand against my countermeasures.
Based on everything I'm reading in the threads I think the fundamental difference between my patches and those which are failing lay in the absence of GUI on the servers.
I'm a command line interface type of guy and have always been at home at a prompt. I'm skipping a lot of exploit territory in the absence of binaries operating in 800x600 text mode with switched off GPU features up the yinyang.
However, I'm getting a few updates daily lately and we'll have to see how things go.
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- January 10, 2018
- Remembering Jim Croce
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Early in my impetuous young manhood, fraught with the frustrations and pitfalls of ignorance, immaturity, and a distinct lack of focus; I sought solace in the music to which I would listen on the FM radio.
James Joseph Croce
January 10, 1943 - September 20, 1973
Once of those singers was Jim Croce who caught my attention earlier in the 1970s and acquired my fandom only to die prematurely in a plane accident shortly after I graduated high school.
Croce was an American folk rock song writer and performer who gained that status of iconic figure in my life.
I enjoyed his music and would take solace in the lyrics and those interludes of peace he brought to the hectic existence which was me foundering adrift in the mercurial youngness and dumbness of my life at that point.
I was stupid, but when you're stupid you don't really possess the facilties to realize it. Such was me and Croce and his music brought a little enjoyment to that stark thing I endured at that time. Through the years I have grown and matured and I attribute some of the saneness and awareness absorbed by my psyche to be assisted by those early quiet times listening to Jim Croce on the radio.
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- January 9, 2018
- Pravasi Bharatiya Divas
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Today I noticed that we mark a significant event in the culture of India. I attempted to memorize the name of the day and wish my friends at the K-Stop down the street where I buy various items during the week a happy day.
I don't think my pronounciation did much for the language ... but they seemed to think it was a nice touch by a customer to reach out and recognize their efforts so I went ahead and blew the term out of the water anyway.
The Indian diaspora has resulted in the dispersal of citizens from the subcontinent of Inda internationally. Some of the very best friends I have ever known in the United States like Dr Subhash Patel and Dr Vasant Garde have been originally from India.
It is a difficult matter to gather the entirety of your world and relocate far away in search of what you might construe to be a better life for yourself. So many of those dispersed citizens of India have done precisely that with themselves and their families.
Today is Non-Resident Indian Day, an annual celebration by the Republic of India observing the contributions of overseas members of the Indian community towards it's development and growth.
The day is sponsored by the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India as well as the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry commemorating the return of Mahatma Gandhi from South Africa to Mumbai on January 9, 1915.
Established in 2003, it is sponsored by the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the Confederation of Indian Industries and the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region.
A formal event marking Pravasi Bhartiya Divas is held in various centers of commerce in India
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- January 8, 2018
- Adventures in Ironing Laundry
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Yesterday I had to iron some laundry for the upcoming work week. I had been spraying down my clothes with sizing between the washer and dryer and hanging them up slightly damp for a while; but this has finally run it's course and requires more in the way of real attention to the clothes for a better overall look.
I must say that I procrastinated even over the past week and when I finally 'knuckled down' to the task at hand I was turning out a shirt in about 5 minutes and a pair of pants in about that time or slightly less ...
Unfortunately, it was something on the order of what I would characterize as "an ordeal". However, what had to be done was done and I was left with a weeks worth of duds ready to go and looking quite presentable if I do say so myself.
Anyway, the bottom line is that all the technology which permitted this fete of grooming to be completed has been around for the entirety of my life.
Only now have I been forced to take matters in hand and iron those garments. Something about the diffuse wrinkles was getting to me. The iron really did make a difference in the appearance, despite my silent whining during the entirety of the procedure.
Now if you'll excuse me, I must go pop a couple of Midol and shoot a tampoon up my ass.
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- January 7, 2018
- Cybersecurity is Failing
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We have security flaws in our technology on several fronts. Unfortunately, they exist on two of the three parts of any computer:
• Hardware
• Software
Media, or "that which stores software" is a likely carrier, but just like "patient zero" in the AIDS infection debacle which still transpires we continue to fail to hold the vectors at bay opting instead to utilize their flawed products in our industries despite the portends of compromise arising everywhere.
The full Dell EMC Data Protection Suite remains compromised and subject to hijack by Zero-day vulnerabilities — though news of this was released long ago. This flaw allows hackers to remotely target a server and spoof the authentication service into giving them administrator rights.
Associated with this is the equally morbid authenticated arbitrary file access issue in the UserInputService, which permits authenticated users to download arbitrary files with root privileges ... though that authentication itself may be an actor from some hostile network.
Can you say "No wonder China is stealing all of our technology" ?
Then there are Intel chip flaws affecting nearly all modern computer processors which would permit hackers to pilfer stored data right on down to the trusted computing base which contains ACLs, passwords, and other sensitive information from desktops, notebooks, smartphones and let us not forget the so-called "cloud" networks internationally.
The "spectre" exploit remains the single most prevalent flaw leaving the entirety of Intel based microprocessors subject to attack. Couple this with there is "no complete software patch in sight" and just where is the security? Who is responsible? Why are there never any consequences?
"Responsible Disclosure" be damned we need a set of definitive fixes which are effective and contemporaneous with the exploits at hand. I suppose that slowed performance after patches are applied is a pitfall of flawed design up front.
We need a vendor who places secure implementations above immediate profits in the market.
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- January 6, 2018
- Back to Work
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All two week vacations eventually end. I find myself at the end of mine, anticipating the return to work after the weekend. With my need for something to do it's really not any dread filled foreboding, either.
Some of us have to have something to do ... even when we grow old. Something about feeling needed, I think.
I can recall a time when I dreaded going to work with a passion. Not so long ago I was the youngest impetuous youth in the office.
Since then I have traversed those boundaries to the oldest ... actually, second oldest person in the office. Also a number of my cohorts really aren't that far behind me in age either.
It seems that there is some appreciation for web guys who aren't in the 18 year old range and actually code well. It's a stark difference from the drag and drop doofus some employ.
Fill in the blanks programming was never for me anyway ... from RPG through Dreamweaver. I'd just as soon use Notepad++ thank you very much!
Anyway, I'm set for another year of workaday world before I'll need much of another vacation. Shoot, I may never want another one to tell the truth. This one simply flew by and I accomplished nothing. Perhaps, that was the point.
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- January 5, 2018
- National Bird Day 2018
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Each year in the United States we observe National Bird Day.
Some half million people participate with various bird related activities including watching, games, and educational pursuits.
Personally, I am a proponent of birds.
I used to actively feed them until my bird feeders became exploited by the various squirrels in my yard and my local jurisdiction forbade me to take care of them, as it were ...
Regardless, if you are of the notion I hope you will both observe the day and engage in those activities you find personally satisfying throughout the year, and not just each January fifth.
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- January 4, 2018
- The Twelve Days of Christmas winding up
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Today is the eleventh day of Twelvetide aka "the twelve days of Christmas" which is a Christian festival of the winter holiday season.
While most in the United States no longer observe Twelvetide, it is an interesting part of that evolving spin on religion and the nativity coupled with those secular gift giving tenets of Christmas in general.
Tomorrow is the Twelveth day of Christmas and thusly Twelvetide will be over for the 2017 season.
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- January 3, 2018
- The Internet is Rude
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I've been pondering the internet of late in the context of my web server with the various others thinking they can go anywhere and everywhere despite the content of robots.txt in the mix.
While I would certainly be naive to presume that the stated rules would be followed in the context of my server there is this notion of retaliatory firewalling as a last resort against these interlopers ... I mean, seeing how I'm not interested in any search engine standings, results, or anything else artificial in my life.
So ... I have began capturing the IPs of those offending search engines and others like the various homespun bots and those scrapers on amazon's EC2 den of iniquity out there seeking to go places I would rather they didn't.
Failure to do what they want to do is not one of those omnipotent scenarios I would prefer ... like nuking some renegade ISP or two or three; but it will have to suffice. Besides, in all fairness the technical folks at amazon are fine and dandy and cannot really help the exceeding low to absent character of some of those calling themselves 'customer'.
In the sweet by and by it will be of little consequences, but I now know better to clear firewall rules then reaccumulate them as I have done with the web server.
Suffice it to say that I am seriously considering a restore from backup and clearing out the riff raff almost totally yet again as it was before I grew all open circuit warm and fuzzy around the Christmas holidays.
I suppose a web server that would enforce robots.txt to a tee would suit me just fine. I would really like a web server that encountered a client in violation of some disallow and shut them down with extreme prejudice. Such a feature rich server environment would really get my attention. It would also be a stupendous hoot.
To hell with all of the rude spiders, bots, search engines, scrapers and BOY am i getting more firewall inclinations as I speak!
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- January 2, 2018
- National Cream Puff Day
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Today is National Cream Puff Day.
Though there isn't a lot of historical data in the threads, I believe this to be a celebration of the cream filled pastry originating from France instead of the ectomorphic body type typically compelled to do the bidding of some bully.
I recall my earliest experiences with this baker's confection to be back when I was a child. Later in time I would encounter these tidbits created en masse on large baking pans in Navy chow halls in Great Lakes and Orlando.
Regardless, I have consumed my fair share of these pastries whenever the opportunity presented itself — noting that the quality of both the pastry shell and the cream filling vary in consistency and flavor depending on who did the preparation.
By and large my favorites were whipped up by the cute little blonde mess management specialist in the Orlando chow hall hands down.
That wasn't the only food she prepared very well, either.
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- January 1, 2018
- New Years Day 2018
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Another year is upon us. I don't have any resolutions for the coming year aside from try to get more exercise and eat healthier.
I'm sorry to report that these are recurring items as well.
My work interests remain pretty much static — data driven intranet web technologies and it's plenty to pursue and I'm very fortunate to have the superior development environment which has been provided.
Perhaps I'll include more open source components in the mix this year.
I hope to spend more time with my mother and have plans on adding another weekly visit toward that end.
There isn't a lot left to accomplish in life that I already haven't done so we'll just have to take it as it comes and see how it goes.
Happy new year to you and yours !
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