"Curiosity drives the scientist. Consistency drives everyone else."
Robert "DocSalvager" Watson
SSH public-keys and private-keys
Blake Smith's 2010 article, "understanding public key private key concepts" provides the absolute best analogy I've come across.
This brief article lays it as simply and memorably as it gets.
SSH keys beautifully explained
Understanding how SSH keys work and how to properly use them has long baffled even some of the most venerable programmers.
In the physical world, a given key usually fits just one lock. We have to special order multiple locks keyed the same for entry doors and such. To share access to something, we give out multiple copies of these physical keys.
It's thus tempting to imagine the shared "public key" to be analogous to a physical key and the "private key" to be the lock.
Actually, it's the other way around.
Wogan explains in "How to set up public key ssh authentication" (January, 2014).
Itching Ears
And now for something completely different...
A friend asked me about this recently and I responded with a lot of detail. Posting it here so I don't lose it. Hope it helps someone.
How do I treat persistently itching ear canals?
I have been fighting with the same problem for several years. Tried everything. Read a lot. Here's what works best for me...First... have found no permanent solution. Just treatments that have to be repeated every few days.
Second... most common cause of itching is soap/shampoo in the ears. Use the mildest thing you can when washing hair and face and dry out ear canals well afterward. I even use blow dryer for this. Dermatologist got me on Dove Sensitive Skin bar soap years ago and I use it in place of shampoo as well. It contains more oils than any other soap. Lather once to remove grease (sweat and hairspray). Rinse. Lather again to put oils back in that make hair smooth and soft (not stuck together). Rinse.
On Q-tips... Without them, this problem is pretty much only treatable by a physician (read: expensive). Since the Rich are preventing Democrats from having the money for constant medical care, we are left to our own devices. Read on...
On Q-Tip Safety...
1) NEVER use Q-Tips on someone else because you cannot know when you reach the eardrum. I dated a girl years ago whose mother cleaned her ears out with hydrogen peroxide regularly. Her eardrum had been punctured for years and we paid for her to have surgery to rebuild it because her Pentecostal parents refused to. Hydrogen Peroxide is good for lots of things, but I'm not a fan of using it on semi internal mucus membranes like ear canals.
2) NEVER use both ends of the Q-Tip in different ears! That just gives you 2 ears itching instead of 1 at a time. Don't know why they continue to make them double-ended other than the cotton ball makes it easier to hold onto.
3) Insert Q-tip VERY SLOWLY into YOUR OWN EAR with slight pressure against roof of ear canal. Gravity makes wax collect on floor of canal.
4) Listen for the individual threads sticking out from Q-Tip to start brushing your eardrum and STOP when you hear/feel them. NEVER PUT PRESSURE ON EARDRUM. It hurts and it can puncture it. If punctured, water from washing/swimming will enter middle-ear which will cause the most painful infection you've ever experienced.
5) On reaching the eardrum, press down LIGHTLY and pull out, using the Q-Tip to pull the wax out of ear.
On Treating the Itch...
What we just did irritates the ear canal, so actually can make itch worse. But we need fairly clean canal in order to treat it.
Apply any of the following to one end of a clean Q-Tip and gently swab the ear canal:
For intense itching, can use antibiotic plus pain reliever cream. It's the pain reliever that actually stops the itching and the cream soothes the irritated skin. Haven't found a non-antibiotic formulation of this though. Cream is better than ointment because it soaks in.
Next most effective is Chest Rub (Vicks VapoRub or Metholatim). VapoRub and generic Chest Rub are just petroleum jelly (Vaseline) with 2.6% menthol in it. The jelly moisturizes the skin and protects it from fungus and bacteria. It's the natural menthol that treats the itching. The greater the percentage menthol the more effective -- BUT too strong burns, thus making it worse. 2.6% seems okay for ears. Can use stronger concentrations for flea bites, etc. on extremities as that skin is tougher. Most muscle "hot/cold" sprays and such as just high concentrations of menthol (12-16%). Do Not Use In Ears!
For maintenance and minor itching, can just use plain petroleum jelly or any oil like Mineral Oil (very cheap) or olive oil. They used to sell little bottles of "sweet oil" for ears but it was just olive and/or mineral oil I think.
Homophobia and Homosexuality
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| PaintingOnScars.com |
This pretty credible source substantiates the reports on the Harvard/MIT and other studies that show a strong correlation between homophobia and suppressed homosexual feelings.
As Freud found, and with it launched the discipline of psychology... it is the intense suppression of true feelings that causes harmfully abnormal stress and behavior; not the feelings themselves.
The whole process of growing up and "becoming civilized" is the process of learning to suppress true feelings when they are harmful to others. This is the mandatory requirement in order to have any kind of functional society.
However, looking deeper tells us that (like everything) there are limits.
Too much suppression, too intensely, for too long creates a fragile psyche that can collapse into harmful behavior when stressed.
Climate Change is a Huge Business Opportunity
Climate-change is the greatest business opportunity since the American westward expansion of the 1800s.American unbridled imagination could lead the world in adapting to it.
That is, if government stopped coddling businesses already making more profits than they know what to do with on financially safe, but dirty and wasteful, old technologies.
As the seas rise and the weather worsens over the next few decades, millions of structures will be damaged and flooded. How are we going to preserve and protect them?
Weather is becoming more extreme. Tornadoes more frequent. Hurricanes farther north and earlier in the year. Unusually high winds. Dry thunderstorms igniting fires. Sudden snow storms out of season. How do we adapt to this new normal?
We need creative thinking. Roofing materials must be redesigned to withstand higher winds and bigger hail. Homes and high-rises must be reinforced. Building codes require massive overhaul to allow for the new approaches and new materials.
Established industries that refuse to adapt will fail. New business models will require a deferment of short-term profits. Owners and stock-holders must be willing to invest in risky new technologies that are not as profitable today but have the best chance to prevail in the future.
Solar panel technology is advancing almost as fast as computers. It will soon be cheaper to produce electricity at the point of use rather than a central location. Utility companies that embrace that fact will prosper by providing standardized, reliable point-of-use systems. Such systems could use of the existing transmission infrastructure for load-balancing and second-sourcing.
The most dramatic reduction in energy use and pollution may not even come from solar panels and electric cars, but instead from a better Internet.
Why do we consume vast amounts of energy and pour out tons of pollution to drive across town twice a day? Why do we leave one perfectly good building empty, only to occupy another? Most jobs today are information workers who could be located anywhere. Why not at home?
That means renovations to create better home-offices. Installation of higher speed Internet and faster computers. More sound-proofing. More ergonomic chairs.
It also means renovating office buildings into apartments. Maybe more two-car driveways to accommodate service vehicles parked at the technician's home while off-duty instead of in a big parking lot.
More extreme weather means more damaged roofs and broken windows. Flat video displays that use very little power are now common and rapidly getting cheaper and more efficient. Digital cameras likewise. For safety, energy conservation and your choice of views, why not "virtual-windows"?
The massive upheavals caused by climate change will create unprecedented economic opportunities... for those ready and willing to embrace it.
photo credit: Climate Indicators - Relative Sea Level Change Along U.S. Coasts via photopin (license)
Interview with Michael Tiemann, open source pioneer
"There are many who have tried to bring the zero-sum game concepts to the open source community," Tiemann says. "They want to wall off some piece of technology, at least from a positioning point of view. They want to force everybody into that particular worldview."Fascinating interview. Fascinating concepts… for software development (as well as finance)…
“Picture a bank, he said, that pays to every one of its patrons an amount of interest based on the sum of all the money it contains.
"In the conventional world, a bank pays interest based on the amount of money that’s deposited. But imagine a bank where no matter how much you deposit, the bank pays interest on the sum total of all the assets to which you make the deposit. So if a whole bunch of my friends all put money into a communal bank account, and then we all get paid the total interest on that sum total, how attractive is that?”
Your Vote Does Not Count
While there is probably still enough restraint to allow a landslide vote the other way to prevail, my own sense is that most single-digit victories probably are fraudulent.
Democratic elections require transparent and verifiable election software at all levels. None is currently allowed in any binding election in this country today.
The reaction to the 2000 presidential election debacle was a masterful use of a crisis to set in motion a campaign to strip away most of the civil rights gains of the last 50 years.
Your vote doesn't count, and neither does mine, until this "electronic ballot-stuffing" is ended.
Some Favorite Quotes
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
Albert Einstein
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
widely attributed to George Orwell
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Orwell
"The price of freedom, is eternal vigilance."
Leonard H. Courtney, Thomas Jefferson, Jean-Luc Picard (fic.), et.al.
"A rising tide sinks all boats that are anchored to the bottom."
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Albert Einstein
"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."
Albert Einstein
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted."
Albert Einstein
"Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."
Albert Einstein
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."
Albert Einstein
"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."
Albert Einstein
"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters."
Albert Einstein
"That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes."
Albert Einstein, 1915
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction."
Albert Einstein
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
Branch Cabell, author of satirical fantasy
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French writer (1900 - 1944)
Shellshock Summary
DESCRIPTION
Twenty-five year old security flaw CVE-2014-6271 found in all versions of bash.
Per http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/09/quick-notes-about-bash-bug-its-impact.html
"The behavior is implemented as a hack involving specially-formatted environmental variables: in essence, any variable starting with a literal "() {" will be dispatched to the parser just before executing the main program. You can see this in action here:
$ foo='() { echo "hi mom"; }' bash -c 'foo'hi mom
NOTES
- 2014-09-25 14:55:22 Experiments indicate that putting anything in front of the
(), like a name for the function or the keywordfunction, disable the flawed behavior - 2014-10-04 05:02:11 Calling bash from ash still passes all the commands in the variable(s)
RESOURCES
- CVE-2014-6271
- http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/09/quick-notes-about-bash-bug-its-impact.html
- http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/157381/when-was-the-shellshock-cve-2014-6271-bug-introduced-and-what-is-the-patch-th?rq=1
- http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/157329/what-does-env-x-something-bash-c-command-do-and-why-is-it-insecure
- http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/24/bash-shell-security-flaw/
Ayn Rand
This was not the usual late-night-talk-show guest interview. No jokes. Very serious. And went over into what was supposed to be another guest's time. (total of about 30mins)
If Ayn Rand were alive today and could speak for herself, I think she would vigorously denounce Rand Paul, Paul Ryan and the rest of her "neo-disciples"... and they would denounce her.
For example... In this interview, she very strongly asserts that no one has the right to another person's life. To that end, she clearly expresses her opposition to any draft for any reason. Only individuals have the right to decide to risk their lives.
Seems to me that the Republicans have hijacked some of her philosophies (primarily laissez-faire capitalism) to justify destroying the lives of others in furtherance of their own affluence.
This interview indicates that in her philosophy of Objectivism, she expected everyone to vigorously pursue their own self-interest. To me, the flaw in it was that she seemed to think everyone had roughly the same capacity to do that. We know that they don't. But at the time of the interview (1967), the divergence was far smaller than it is today.
I couldn't disagree more with today's Republican interpretation of Ayn Rand's philosophies. I could say the same about the Christian churches' interpretation of Jesus' philosophies. I think both have been used to further agendas that each would abhor were they alive.
Perhaps that's why these "reinterpretations" have only come about well after the icons were too dead to disagree.
Republicans are Scared. We Democrats are too.
I've been one of those. But I may be coming out the other side now.
We are afraid. We are overwhelmingly afraid.
We have a lot to be afraid of. More than most of us can rationally handle.
For most people, "truth" is almost totally determined by how much we trust the speaker. But Watergate began an irreversible erosion in the reliability of that instinct in this country. Iran-Contra was another milestone in that process. The 2000 presidential election.
The election of Barak Obama filled us with hope that the nightmare was finally over.
Then came Mitch McConnell and the R's war on the the first black Presidency, the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizen's United, and countless other recent events.
Now we have ISIS and Ebola... dangers for which it is socially acceptable to freak-out over because they are external rather than internal.
(Maybe it's like beating up somebody for calling your brother names... the same brother you pick on mercilessly every day.)
The freakout over Ebola is really our pent up fears finally having an outlet for their expression.
"Fight" and "flight" are both reactions to fear. Despite our prejudices, "flight" is often a wiser choice for ultimate success and survival than "fight."
Most species have a predilection, an instinctive bias, for one or the other. Cultures often develop such biases too. But unlike instincts, cultural bias can take less time to change in light of traumatic events.
By the 1940s, the Japanese culture had developed a "fight" bias when faced with adversity. A couple of atom-bombs however converted them to a more thoughtful "flight" bias. Look at them now!
The Republicans have a strong prejudicial "fight" bias. For them, "offense" is not just "the best defense," it's the ONLY defense. Anything else is considered shameful.
Democrats however have a "flight" bias. Most try to avoid conflict, "find common ground," and compromise for the common good.
Democrats force ourselves to respect the views of people we truly believe are just "bat-shit-crazy."
Democrats often have "bleeding hearts," but they bleed because their heads are restraining them from trying to give more than they have.
Democrats work hard to stretch forethought as far as possible to anticipate and overcome problems with our own ideas. (A practice that's often used against us, BTW.)
Democrats then, it seems to me, are the only hope our country has for survival. We are the only ones looking ahead, and using our heads, to overcome the dangers we face.
I never thought I'd say this but... Republicans are not "bad people."
They're just scared.
It is up to Democrats to protect them as well as ourselves.
It's up to Democrats to find solutions, as Republican fears have stopped them from even trying.
The Republican leadership have become like cornered animals. All rationality is gone. They see little or no way out. The only, very slim chance they see for survival, is an almost certainly suicidal attack.
We Democrats have to get off their backs and take action ourselves... though we don't know what to do any more than they do.
But their "fight" bias has them taking action anyhow. Actions that have put us all in that desperate corner.
Those Republican actions are lethal.
We Democrats had better figure out better ones... and quickly.
Germany offers free college tuition to U.S. and international students
All German universities are now free to Americans and all other international students. The last German state to charge tuition at its universities struck down the fees this week.
The ramifications...
- Germany is about to be flooded with student visa applications.
- The cost of rent in Germany will skyrocket.
- The Germany economy is about to boom to far greater than that of the U.S. on a per-capita basis.
- German is about to become the hottest course in U.S. schools.
- U.S. student enrollment is about to plummet causing a short-term spike in tuition in a futile attempt to make up the difference. After a year or two, the U.S. will be forced to follow Germany's lead.
- A great many U.S. students that get into Germany will do their best to stay after graduation as European governments and societies share the beliefs and ideals of young people far better than the U.S.
Maybe there is hope...
Shellshocked?
Should bash shells be replaced with the new patched version?
US-CERT recommends users and administrators review TA14-268A, Vulnerability Note VU#252743 and the Redhat Security Blog (link is external) for additional details and to refer to their respective Linux or Unix-based OS vendor(s) for an appropriate patch.
A fact...
A timeline...
- Oct 2012 - "Apple is added to the NSA’s list of penetrated servers"
- Dec 2013 - Apple Says It Has Never Worked With NSA...
- Sep 19, 2014 - Likely that NSA has now demanded Apple's data and they are resisting
- Sep 24, 2014 - US-CERT is aware of a Bash vulnerability affecting Unix-based operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS X
Ramifications...
- The Bash shellshock "vulnerability" has been a "feature" of Bash for 22 years. You'd think in all that time, in all those high-security environments that run Unix or Linux, someone would have worried about misuse.
- Now, every installation of Bash in the world is about to be replaced.
- Though Bash is open-source, few people actually take the time to study the code of such large and complex programs.
- Bash is written in C, which supports embedded assembly-language code. Code that even fewer programmers have the skills to read.
- Bash is written in C, which easily supports treating any block of binary, such as something labeled as data or a small image, as code.
- Thus, a skilled programmer could hide "backdoor" code in plain sight, and it probably wouldn't be discovered unless it caused an error of some kind.
- Extremely high-skilled programmers that break the law are often employed by federal agencies.
What are all you people doing here?
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| Wieskirche Gates |
"Why didn't you save us?" said the multitudes before him.
God replied...
"I sent you my son so you'd learn the nobility of self sacrifice. You didn't.
"I sent you Ebola so you'd learn compassion for those you feared. You didn't.
"I sent you AIDS so you'd learn humility that such things could happen to those you loved. You didn't.
"I sent you terrorism so you'd learn that oppression by the few will always be overthrown by the many. You didn't.
"I sent you climate change so you'd learn to wisely recycle your waste lest nature do it for you... most harshly. You didn't.
"I sent you these things and many more, that your souls might be saved."
"So. Can we go in now?" a man asked.
God replied, "What do you think?"
"How extreme isolation warps the mind"
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| (Getty Images) |
My own theory goes something like this...
All that we perceive is the result of our imagination.
All raw sensory input is interpreted by our imagination.
If there is little or no sensory input, such as while sleeping or in extreme isolation, our imagination proceeds to rummage around through our memories for "input" to re-interpret.
This extrapolating and recombining and juxtapositioning is the process by which we solve problems and think creatively. The process by which we "imagine."
Economics 101: Something from nothing
I've learned that my post back in January 2014 (below) was greatly inaccurate though the result is still essentially the same. -- docsalvage, June 2014
See the Wikipedia article...
Money Supply - Fractional Reserve Banking - example
On Income Inequality ...
re:Strangely enough, I think they're both right... In the same way each of the proverbial blind-men is right in their description of the elephant they only know by touch.
On Income Inequality: A French Economist Vs. An American Capitalist
by MARILYN GEEWAX, May 11, 2014 5:40 AM ET
The healthiest possible economy occurs when 100% of the population feels maximum incentive to risk innovation in the pursuit of happiness (i.e. success).
Because the motivaters of the 1% are mostly in opposition to those of the 99%, maximum prosperity can only be achieved at some point of equilibrium between them. We've been WAY out of equilibrium for about 10-20 years.
Change of address for robertcwatson@yahoo.com
Yahoo has chosen to become agressive in its competition with Gmail.
I've been paying $19.99/yr for Yahoo Mail Plus so the Yahoo mail would be imported to Gmail via POP3. Recently Yahoo added DMARC policies in response to the Heartbleed panic which have broken that functionality. They've made no attempt to contact their users or help with problems.
Their page stated that the normal free email now included POP3 forwarding so I cancelled Yahoo Mail Plus. I now find that that was a mistake that Yahoo will not fix.
I've been paying $19.99/yr for Yahoo Mail Plus so the Yahoo mail would be imported to Gmail via POP3. Recently Yahoo added DMARC policies in response to the Heartbleed panic which have broken that functionality. They've made no attempt to contact their users or help with problems.
Their page stated that the normal free email now included POP3 forwarding so I cancelled Yahoo Mail Plus. I now find that that was a mistake that Yahoo will not fix.
I've found no resolution other than now paying Yahoo $49.99/yr for their newly named but no new capability, "Ad-Free Service".
Thus, please direct all future email to me at robertcwatson1@gmail .com
Good Riddance to Yahoo
Robert
Trust in truth keeps hope alive
HeartBleed - Not So Fast?
I've been programming computers since 1981 and run several in my "home lab." I haven't done anything yet in response to Heartbleed.
Recommendations based on my experience...
Windows Systems -- Watch the tech news for a week or two after patches/upgrades are released to see if they work and don't screw other things up. Then apply and watch for another week to be sure your systems are running okay and give the big services more time to insure they have everything reliably fixed. Then change passwords.
Mac Systems -- Do whatever Apple says to do. It's usually right.
Android Systems -- Most software is automatically updated so nothing to do. Wait a few weeks to change passwords.
Linux Systems --Many systems are using older, unaffected versions of OpenSSL so nothing to do. If you have affected systems and they're running servers, patch/upgrade OpenSSL and related software even though there might be problems. People are depending on you. If you're running as anything else, keep watching tech news for reliability of OpenSSL and related patches/upgrades. Patch/upgrade when everything is stable.
If you don't have "a system" for assigning passwords, this might be a good time to develop one. Change passwords when all the major services you use are fixed. It does no good, and even exposes you more, to change your password and then connect to an unupgraded system.
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