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- September 26, 2016
- Bitcoin Thoughts
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I was pondering my recent decision to abandon my intent to operate a full node on my network. This was the result of disturbing news on the chinese front whereby massive farms for the purpose of mining coin have been placed online.
I decided that the entire notion of bitcoin as a viable mainstream currency was flawed with that fallacy being the inevitable abuse in the underlying methodology.
The wallets remain too insecure. The notion of volatility is overwhelming. Couple this with the abrupt and massive failures of companies involved solely in the bitcoin realm becoming insolvent and the largest group of cyber criminals devoting massive farms toward the end of bitcoin wealth ...
The underlying consequences in the absence of the distinct lack of morality within the bitcoin culture lends credence to abandoning those full node operational parameters as well.
Even in the best case scenario operations can be taxing and my bandwidth and farm are pretty busy as they exist in the absence of a full node machine in their midst.
Seeing how I'd just as soon not become involved with such a shady bunch of people wanting anonymous transactions for bypassing those checks and balances required by the financial sector.
So much for my thoughts of operating a full node bitcoin server. Despite my initial optimism toward the project — bitcoin will not be a part of my future after all.
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- September 25, 2016
- Looking at Cell Phones
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Today mom and I are going to look a cell phones. She needs to escape the crooks at Boost Mobile who would just as soon rob her repeatedly as look at her.
When all you can do is provide support persons from third world countries lacking morals and hygiene for whom English is a second language not understood you pretty much cannot expect anything in the way of ethical treatment.
This sums up Boost Mobile quite nicely.
So now we're going to find a different phone with support centers in the United States and quit allowing Boost Mobile to victimize her.
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- September 24, 2016
- New IP Camera Server
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So I've finally received my new IP camera server and will get busy placing it online today.
It does a lot that the old one doesn't and the implementation is much newer as well.
I'm looking forward to the programmable motion detection and the stupendous number of cameras I can now have in various places on my network ...
not to mention the updated drivers which are a functional inclusion.
It supports 64 sources whereas the old one only supported 5.
I've been wanting the ability to place more surveillance around the house just so when people come they see the presence and think twice about casing the joint to rob me.
I'm going to take the old one to Mama's and set up her little camera surveillance configuration on wireless and get her a ddns IP so she can monitor her place from her phone.
This has been a while in the making and it's all very exciting to finally be coming to fruition.
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- September 23, 2016
- Pythons Overtake Florida Keys
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It was bound to happen. Those reptilian denizens of Okeechobee and the Everglades have now traveled southward and are inundating the Florida Keys adversely impacting the native animals and diminishing an already compromised habitat.
The Miami Herald reports that the first breeding Burmese pythons have been encountered in the Florida Keys.
The southern keys are already reporting iguana infestations of epic proportions. Maybe they'll end up with fewer chickens in Key West running all over the place.
Current discussions include the fact that total removal of all the Burmese pythons will likely result in more swimming in to continue habitation.
Lion Fish in the Atlantic, iguanas in the keys, pythons in the keys and points north ... the desirability of visiting grows less and less for me personally.
Not a reptile fan. Not a potential dinner for some 20 foot snake. I'll remain where it gets too cold for their survival thank you very much.
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- September 22, 2016
- Autumnal Equinox
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The first day of Fall is upon us ... not that the temperatures will really be showing it.
The Autumnal equinox occurs the moment our Sun crosses the equator – that imaginary line dividing the earth into two hemispheres – from north to south.
The opposite happens in March and is known as the "vernal" or spring equinox.
The significance of all of this to me is the approaching cooler weather (hopefully) and the advent of the holiday season ... which commences for me on October 31 and Halloween.
It's significance is personal and has been cultivated within me since childhood.
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- September 22, 2016
- Coldfusion Adventures at an End
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So the issues associated with CF 2016 at work involve changes made back in the CF version 9 to 10 era ...
and we skipped from version 9 to the 2016 release bypassing all that interceding learning curve as well.
It was all very simple but hard to find and grossly undocumented the entire while.
Today we pretty much put together the event oriented component required to make the new stuff work and although we're not a hundred percent there on the error trapping and fine points we know enough to make the stuff work again with minimal huhbub.
The humor of it all is how nothing at all worked then making a simple change turned the situation into one where there appeared never to be a problem.
The more you think you know the more you find out there are holes in your understanding.
The new install has broken a number of legacy apps which will require attention but the error logs are making those problem children known to us quite nicely.
Suffice it to say that I have a nice book with details on the way, God is in His Heaven, and all is again right with the world.
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- September 21, 2016
- Adventures in Coldfusion
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We're having issues at work surrounding the new 64 bit Coldfusion Enterprise Server whereby stuff which used to work very well on earlier versions dosen't work at all now.
These changes involve essential methods and those we're seeing appear to be outside a set of foundation class changes and bleed into the realm of WTF error looking mess.
I wouldn't put this past the operating system nor the middleware if you want to know the truth regarding culpability.
Perhaps an update will take care of it. We may need to blow it away and reinstall from scratch.
Tomorrow I shall take down the server and give it the once over.
Love the challenge, hate the bother.
Oh well, the task falls to me. Duty calls ...
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- September 20, 2016
- The audacity of 'an insult to my legacy'
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The news has the great whining lame duck saying how a Trump presidency would be an insult to his legacy.
Anything that insults the Obama legacy is certainly alright with me.
The single worst thing to happen in the history of our Republic turned Oligarchy is the Obama administration with it's innumerable handouts, tax and spend penchants, never ending vacations on Airforce One, and this notion of executive privilege being some legal rule by decree construct designed to let a president circumvent the law.
The "nasty, hateful charlatan" is Barack Obama, not Donald Trump.
Yeah, Trump can be a braggart but he hasn't damaged the country as the Obama administration with it's overstepping of the constitution and the law in a never ending pursuit of corrupting the fabric of our nation with his taint of illegality draped in totalitarian control by this person who was placed into office by the stupidity and ignorance of the electorate.
The innumerable breaches of statutes and never ending breaking of the law has been telling on the Obama administration continuously and a Clinton administration would be just as fraught with such shenanigans only she would have to be paid under the table as well.
Barack Obama has tried to over run the nation with illegals at every turn. He has aided and abetted our enemies with billions in tax dollars.
Enough of Barack Obama, his constantly vacationing family, and their freeloading on the US taxpayer.
Enough of his coddling and giving our tax dollars to our enemies and kowtowing to the muslim leaders in all his lack of presidential comportment.
Enough of this biggest mistake in the history of the United States of America.
Enough of taking Airforce One on incessant trips to campaign for Hillary Clinton, his acolyte.
Enough of the insult he has brought on our nation.
Obama begone !
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- September 19, 2016
- Pondering Creativity
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Last night I hit the bing news as is my habit anymore after checking once again to find that google simply can't get geolocation correct to save their lives ...
Anyway a thread on where creativity comes from caught my eye so I went to the Scientific American site and gave it a read.
I was taken with the notion of the "interconnectedness of society, enabling us to connect and share more" as a root causation of the creative process and recall from my own youth how reading numerous sets of encylopedias instilled within me not only that fantasy world which was the chagrin of my early adulthood ...
but that creative flair which has seen me through the innumerable projects I have undertaken over the years with mostly success — and a few failures thrown in there as well.
The crux of that which struck me most was the thought that I might truly be a product of society given my distinctly unsocial nature and all of the solitary hours I log to this day.
But had I been some social butterfly pursuant of parties and popularity I dare say that I would have been significantly less successful than I am right now for in that crucible which exists between the ears of a person the one thing that never failed me is my natural ability to tackle a problem with a satisfactory algorithm even though my cohorts might not have a clue as to how the coding works or where it ultimately goes aside from that end result with which they operate.
Maybe I did learn somewhat more over the years than I give my education credit for imparting.
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- September 18, 2016
- First Euthanasia in Belgium for Child
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I have been following this item since the middle of last week.
A child in Belgium has been administered euthanasia due to protracted terminal illness. The age and identity of this child remain unknown.
This is the first case of a child being euthanized since the laws were changed to permit assisted suicide to children during the course of Belgian legal affairs on the matter.
Initially Belgium legalized euthanasia during proceedings in 2002 with minors having been originally included then removed from the final legislation due to opposition by political elements in the country.
While I am certainly apalled that any child would be so ill as to request mercy killing ...
I feel that a child should be afforded the same consideration as an adult when they meet the specified criteria:
constant and unbearable physical or mental suffering that cannot be alleviated
Our capacity for compassion toward others should certainly include children who are suffering.
This child has been afforded mercy which is unavailable to me where I live because of those statutes we have on the books.
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- September 17, 2016
- Ars technica UK Homebrew Router Competition
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So I was just beboping around the various news outlets this morning when I encountered a very interesting item testing various routers home made "from scratch" to the "off the shelf" competition.
I have to say that I was taken somewhat aback by the stated metrics and the fact that a home made router actually beat the retail counterpart in various testing. It seems that a DIY router configuration of linux beat the very router I upgraded to a scant year back and it has me somewhat in a tiz ...
HOWEVER, my penchant for swapping out the old with the new to try and gain an edge on emerging tech and to get the stuff replaced before it fails was upheld in the verbiage to my only gratification.
Just because my rationale is sound doesn't mean that my choices have been so.
It appears that instead of buying my various retail brands I may opt for something a little more esoteric and a skillset taxing variant on the stuff I normally buy.
Anyway the metrics revealed a distinct advantage but is the effort worth that extra "umph" provided to the networking as a result ?
It all remains relevant to how much time you have on your hands and how ambitious you are. I'm pretty doggone happy with the high end wireless and gigbit portage I presently have with my off the shelf router.
I suppose I'll just have to ascertain my "laziness coefficient" in the final calculations of whether I'm going to go homebrew or off the shelf next time.
Titilating to say the least. At least I have a while to think about it. Besides, my security devices are eating up a bit of that throughput because I simply hate the thought of someone getting over on me.
Decisions, decisions, decisions !
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- September 16, 2016
- Covering Your Webcam
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The director of the FBI said that he covers his webcam at a conference this week. Others do it as well. People like the CEO of facebook and a multitude of IT people known to me.
Some even go as far as to place a piece of tape over the embedded lenses on notebooks just to keep prying eyes away ...
They even make a lovely set of self-adhesive sliding covers in a variety of colors ready to attach to your device !
A few years back I learned of the exploits available for webcams and laughed them off seeing how I do little at a notebook that requires hiding.
But as I became more aware of the possibilities I began covering various web cameras throughout my home and even rewired the router and reconfigured the webcam server so as not to have any of the redundant utilization of which I used to be so fond.
While I don't think that anyone can get past my firewall to access a webcam on my network ... I am quite sure that I could inadvertently mess around in front of one unaware so now I just make like Barney Fife and nip it in the bud.
So if you have a web cam that remains attached to something likely to provide surreptitious access under the right conditions ... be it an infrastructure, notebook, USB, or smartphone web cam — you would do well to cover that lens.
Federal machines with web cams have built in covers at the ready.
I have always felt that we overshare nowadays and that privacy is a boon commodity anymore to be sure.
No need to provide any shows to the masses just because they may seek one.
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- September 15, 2016
- USB Kill Sticks
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Now for just $49.95 you can kill your computer with an electrical surge via the USB port.
The device, called USB Kill 2.0, operates by being inserted into a USB port on the target machine.
It then quickly charges onboard capacitors via that same port and quickly discharges them, essentially similar to a "juice jacking" attack performed on a charging port in use on a phone or other device.
The Hong Kong company also sells a USB protection shield called Test Shield for a scant sixteen bucks which ostensibly allows testing of the USB Kill 2.0 product without destruction of the target machine.
Kind of a technological hara kiri / seppuku when those compromising moments have arrived and there's no place to run or hide.
There is a model of machine presently invulnerable to the device. It seems that late models of the Apple MacBook have optically isolated portage data lines.
So then ... you either keep these particular devices away from your machine or risk it becoming toast by and large.
I have read threads expressing skepticim regarding the completeness of the kill procedure but really, do we want to take a chance?
I suppose that if you're a whistle blower or individual in a tight spot it may even be worth it to fry your machine quickly and easily to prevent sensitive data from acquisition by law enforcement or cyber (or other) criminals.
I would certainly think a suitable DR plan would be indicated up front in any standard operational procedural scenario involving the total distruction of mission critical machines. I'd have backup sets scattered all over the place myself.
Pitiful rationale as well from the standpoint of waste. Self destructs are not really ports in a storm.
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- September 14, 2016
- vDOS Perps Arrested in Israel
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Last Thursday Itay Huri and Yarden Bidani, two 18 year old Israeli teens, were placed under house arrest by the FBI for involvement in an "attack for hire" distributed denial of service (DDOS) called vDOS.
The "service" floods certain web sites with access requests rendering them inaccessible by others.
This site allegedly utilized huge botnets on the order of tens of thousands of machines compromised by malware.
These persons seeking the rendering of inaccessible web sites were required to pay fees up front.
Other cash flow sources allegedly consisted of funds extorted from the victims of those targeted sites to obtain cessation of said DDOS attacks.
These rather unsophisticated teenagers were questioned and released on $10K bail and had their passports confiscated. They were ordered not to utilize any form of electronic communication for the next 30 days.
It seems that this malicious entity, vDOS, is felt to be one of the most disruptive attack-for-hire services on the internet.
Fortunately, the insight and skills of these two cyberthugs weren't all that as was their decidedly flawed business model.
In the spirit of "what goes around comes around" vDOS fell victim itself to a massive hack leveled upon it resulting in the rather lame consequences described above.
Boo!
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